Writer: Shawn Harris, “The Cost of (Digital) Living” (2024-2025)
Instructor: Andrei Guruianu
Editor: Abby Rabinowitz
Watch how over the progression of four exercises, Shawn gleans the pieces of what will eventually become the idea of his essay:
Exercise One: Shawn represents Marche’s essay. (Note: not all the ideas represented here will make it into Shawn’s essay.)
Exercise Two: Shawn represents Foer’s essay.
Exercise Three: Shawn places the two essays into a conversation. Note that many of the twists and turns of this conversation will later appear in the essay and guide its conceptual thinking.
Exercise Four: Shawn represents a scene from his own experience, places it into the conversation he’s set up between Marche and Foer, and extends both the conversation and his own thinking. Now all the pieces are in place: Shawn has everything he needs to begin honing his idea through draft work.
Progression 1, Assignment 1
Reading and Representing
This exercise involves close reading, which, if done actively and rigorously can help you learn about writing itself. It is important to keep up with the way you respond and react to the essays as you read. You should use a pen or pencil to mark words, phrases, or images that strike you as interesting or provocative (especially key terms/concepts or phrases that you suspect carry additional meaning or importance to the writer’s idea). As you read, do not simply underline and highlight—you need to keep track of why you did so, what you thought when you made that mark. These notes are called marginalia. Therefore, you should get in the habit of taking notes and recording your thoughts about what you are processing—and these should go beyond simply agreeing or disagreeing (like/dislike), but what the text actually makes you think or rethink, what it makes you see and consider in a new light. You are trying to find out, over time, what the essay says, what it means.
Read Stephen Marche’s “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?” straight through once for pleasure, for the subject matter and enjoyment of the text and the ideas on the page. In a first reading simply try to get a sense of the major points, notice moments that resonate with you in familiar ways, but also moments that challenges you to think about the issues it explores in new and nuanced ways. At this stage just mark these moments briefly, but do not get caught up in them (yet); allow yourself to read once beginning to end without too much interruption (looking up a definition or a cultural reference you do not understand is a good reason to pause!)
Next, read the essay a second time, this time slowly and with close attention to detail. This is the time for marginalia, to fully engage with the text (ask questions, make comments, make connections between parts, continue define words if needed, etc. — all of that is good marginalia ). After this close reading is completed, in several well-developed paragraphs (3 can be a rough guide) represent your essay to someone who is not familiar with any aspect of it, who’s never seen or read it before. In other words, convey to an outside reader a thorough sense of what this essay is generally about, as well as what the author most wants you to understand and think about. In your representation of the writer’s ideas you should, at a minimum, clearly introduce your text/author at the beginning and provide a general sense of what the essay is about. As you dive into some of its nuances, use appropriate evidence/quotes from the text to convey your understanding of its ideas (1-2 quotes per paragraph can be a rough guide).
***Please keep in mind that if a text “appears” to you simple on the surface that does not mean it is simplistic and obvious in terms of the idea it presents to you. Therefore, do not reduce these texts to clichés and statements of “what you already know.” If what you end up writing about can easily come across as a “lesson” or a “moral,” something you’ve likely heard before, then chances are that you have stopped at a superficial reading of that text. Reread, reconsider, and allow yourself to discover something new, even if that might be a moment of confusion for now. Allow yourself the pleasure to discover new and hidden, not-so-easy-to-see relationships among the words/concepts on the page. Come out of the experience with a different perspective than when you entered it.
In his essay, “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely,” author and novelist Steven Marche discusses the relationship between social media use and loneliness. Marche describes a world in which unprecedented access to instantaneous connection is coupled with a surprising increase in reported loneliness and raises the question, “Does the Internet make people lonely, or are lonely people more attracted to the Internet?” (Marche 66)
Marche considers this problem through the lens of Facebook, the ubiquitous social network with 845 billion users and more than a trillion Web views monthly. He quotes an Australian research paper which correlated Facebook usage to feelings of distance from family and which indicated that lonely people used Facebook more often than socially engaged ones. Still, Marche sees room for multiple interpretations in the study’s findings. “The people who experience loneliness on Facebook,” he says, paraphrasing a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, “are lonely away from Facebook, too…on Facebook, as everywhere else, correlation is not causation” (Marche 67).
In fact, Marche allows, the United States had been trending toward increased loneliness for decades. He cites a 2010 AARP study which found 35 percent of adults over the age of 45 were “chronically lonely” (Marche 64) while only 20 percent of that same age group reported experiencing chronic loneliness in a survey conducted ten years prior. He further argues that “loneliness is at the American core” (Marche 64) and provides examples from historical events, like the separation of the Pilgrims from the British mainland for solitude of the New Worlds; cultural touchstones, like Whitman’s poem, “Song of Myself” and Emerson’s essay, “Self-Reliance”; and collective heroes, like the astronaut, the “ultimate American icon” (Marche 64) who is, at once, the most “heroic” and the most “alone” (64).
Still, Marche differentiates between the loneliness of this American iconography and the loneliness presented by Facebook and technology. While the former expresses values of non-conformism and individuality, the latter represents “a grind” (Marche 69), a constant process of image curation and happiness seeking that follows us from morning, “before we even pour a cup of coffee” (Marche 69), until night. This consistent performance of seeking happiness is destructive, Marche argues, because “the more you try to be happy, the less happy you are” (Marche 69), a claim demonstrated in a University of Denver study which correlated valuing happiness with its decrease.
Throughout the essay, Marche references the poignant example of Yvette Vickers, an actress and former Playboy playmate who was found dead in her home, mummified, nearly a year after her demise. She was discovered with her computer on, “its glow permeating the empty space” (Marche 60). Upon further investigation it was discovered that her final months were spent not in contact with her friends and family but with fans and admirers who had discovered her via the Internet. For Marche, Vickers is a casualty of this new brand of Internet-reinforced loneliness. In one place, he asserts that “loneliness may not have killed Yvette Vickers, but it has been linked to a greater probability of having the kind of heart condition that did kill her” (Marche 64). In another, he links Vickers’ running computer at the time of her death to his broader point about the relentlessness of the online experience. In a way, he implies, we are all Yvette Vickerses, spending large portions of our lives in front of a glowing screen, attempting to achieve happiness from the people on the other side.
Progression 1, Assignment 2
Reading and Representing, cont.
READ:
Jonathan Safran Foer, “How Not to Be Alone.”
JoAnna Novak, “We’re Aching for the One Thing the Metaverse Can’t Give Us.”
Repeat the work of Ex. 1 for each of the above texts.
Text 1
In his New York Times article, “How Not to Be Alone,” essayist Jonathan Safran Foer laments the effect the Internet has had on our collective empathy. In Foer’s view, the convenience provided by technology’s speed has stunted our ability to feel complex emotions. “Our personhood,” he claims, “is carved […] by the flow of our habits” (Foer). By emphasizing fast and impersonal communication, we become beings who are fast and impersonal.
Foer describes the origins of modern methods of communication: they were developed as “diminished substitutes for an impossible activity.” Unable to talk to someone in person, we might call them via telephone. Unable to reach them, we might leave them a message or a text and so on. The problem, Foer argues, began when we started to prioritize these lesser versions of communication. When our channels of communication become narrow and emotionally empty, our identities follow this model. As we become accustomed to “saying little” we necessarily become accustomed to “feeling little” (Foer). In explanation, Foer cites the research of psychologists studying compassion who have shown that the brain needs time to process the various aspects and angles of a situation, its “psychological and moral dimensions” (Foer). Deprived of that time, we become “less likely and able […] to care” (Foer).
To emphasize this failing, Foer turns to a personal anecdote, describing a young girl whom he observed sobbing on a bench in Brooklyn after an apparently distressing conversation with her mother. While the question of whether to intervene is a thorny one, involving a certain amount of “human computing,” Foer points out that it is certainly a cowardly shirking of one’s emotional duty to bury oneself in “whatever one’s favorite iDistraction happens to be” (Foer). And yet isn’t that exactly what we are inclined to do?
Progression 1, Assignment 3
Locating Conceptual Echoes & Articulating Connections
By now you have likely already begun to make connections and see the relationships among the texts we are working with. In other words, you have begun to recognize the relationship/conversation taking place between them.
For this exercise, you are asked to choose two of the texts you have read so far that you believe resonate with one another in a rich and intellectually stimulating way (and, importantly, ones whose ideas you would like to continue writing about). Once you have settled on your two texts, your goal will be to write a two-page reflection that reveals the relationship you have discovered between your the two texts (use of ample evidence/quotes of those “intertextual echoes” will be necessary). In other words, show your reader how the two sources, when considered in conversation with one another deepens and extends readers’ understanding of the shared issue they are addressing.
To begin the work of this exercise, I recommend that you take some time and read both of your two texts one more time. This time, however, think more specifically of ways that one of the texts expands upon, deepens, responds to, or complicates a key aspect of the other either by illuminating a concern, question, image, or argument (or a combination of those). (We will call that text the ancillary (or deepening) text, and the text it helps to deepen we will call the core or primary text.) The thematic and conceptual connections should allow you to go beyond “just like” statements, and instead should give you the opportunity to do good reflecting and thinking work, to consider the implications of the texts’ ideas as they play out against and in combination with one another. Therefore, aim to go beyond pointing out connections (X says this, and Y says that); you’re not simply looking for similarities or direct parallels, but also ways in which these texts allow you to think more broadly about the problem/issue they are addressing. What do they seem to suggest/imply that lies both within their arguments but also gestures to something outside of themselves, something larger and broader in scope? Put another way, through the enactment of the relationship between your texts you should be able to bring to light the problems (and importantly the implications) at the heart of the conversation. *Lastly, at the end of the reflection, please compose two possible open-ended discussion questions regarding the issues you’re exploring through your texts that could be shared with the class (should not have yes/no as a potential answer or lead to a suggestion of how to solve something).
Note: At this point you are not writing a formal essay by any means; in fact, a certain level of uncertainty, questioning, puzzling over the deeper implications or what you’re seeing is normal and it’s part of the process of meaning making. Nevertheless, as you write remember (as a means to practice these skills) to introduce your texts and integrate relevant language from both texts (quotes)—create/orchestrate a lively conversation between the texts on the page (as we have seen, using transitional words/phrases will be key here: but, and yet, however, despite, although, etc.), using your own smart thinking as the glue holding it all together.
In his essay, “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely,” Steven Marche discusses the relationship between social media use and loneliness. Marche describes a world in which unprecedented access to instantaneous connection is coupled with a surprising increase in reported loneliness and raises the question, “Does the Internet make people lonely, or are lonely people more attracted to the Internet?” (Marche 66) Marche considers this problem through the lens of Facebook, the ubiquitous social network with 845 billion users and more than a trillion Web views monthly. He quotes an Australian research paper which correlated Facebook usage to feelings of distance from family and which indicated that lonely people used Facebook more often than socially engaged ones. Nevertheless, Marche allows, the United States has always valued a certain amount of loneliness. He goes as far as to say that “loneliness is at the American core”, providing examples from historical events, like the separation of the Pilgrims from the British mainland for solitude of the New Worlds; cultural touchstones, like Whitman’s poem, “Song of Myself” and Emerson’s essay, “Self-Reliance”; and collective heroes, like the astronaut, the “ultimate American icon” who is, at once, the most “heroic” and the most “alone” (Marche 64).
Still, Marche differentiates between the loneliness of this American iconography and the loneliness presented by Facebook and technology. While the former expresses values of non-conformism and individuality, the latter represents “a grind,” a constant process of image curation and happiness seeking that follows us from morning, “before we even pour a cup of coffee,” until night (Marche 69). This consistent performance of seeking happiness is destructive, Marche argues, because “the more you try to be happy, the less happy you are,” a claim demonstrated in a University of Denver study which correlated valuing happiness with its decrease. In addition, Marche draws a distinction between “solitude,” a state of aloneness that stimulates “self-reflection and self-reinvention”; and loneliness, a state that encourages replacing this self-reflection with the easy perusal of others’ digital identities (Marche 69). In other words, a certain amount of solitude is necessary to understand who we are, but online aloneness tends to lead away from self-understanding by filling our time with ourselves with the curated identities of others.
While Marche argues that social media exacerbates loneliness, essayist Jonathan Safran Foer, in his New York Times article, “How Not to Be Alone,” suggests a broader criticism of digital technology’s impact on our interpersonal relationships. To Foer, the convenience provided by technology’s speed has stunted our ability to feel complex emotions. “Our personhood,” he claims, “is carved […] by the flow of our habits” (Foer). By emphasizing fast and impersonal communication, we become beings who are fast and impersonal. Whereas Marche’s focus is primarily inward, on what media-induced loneliness does to a person’s mental and physical health, Foer turns his view outward, claiming that increased engagement with our devices leads us to apathy and distraction, people “shaped” by their use of technology into people who are “more likely to forget others” (Foer).
Like Marche, Foer draws from the American past to understand the changes technology has had on our present. Returning to the origins of modern methods of communication, he finds that they were developed as “diminished substitutes for an impossible activity” (Foer). Unable to talk to someone in person, we might call them via telephone. Unable to reach them, we might leave them a message or a text and so on. Foer worries we now prioritize these lesser versions of communication, and when our channels of communication become narrow and emotionally empty, our identities follow this model. As we become accustomed to “saying little,” we necessarily become accustomed to “feeling little” (Foer). This language of “diminished substitutes,” where something of quality is exchanged for something lesser, echoes Marche’s problem of “self-presentation” and its effects, where people replace their actual pursuit of happiness with an online persona of presented happiness, and, in turn, other people substitute their own self-reflection for the vicarious experience of consuming others’ lives (Marche 69).
Yet the two authors differ in their analysis of this substitution: Marche sees its effects as damaging for our mental health; he links self-presentation to an observed increase in narcissism and loneliness, both of which represent “a fighting retreat from the messy reality of other people”’ (Marche 69). In other words, a desire to escape essential character-building social interactions due to discomfort has negative effects on mental health. While Foer does agree that preferring “diminished substitutes” damages our own mental well-being and emotional complexity, he is more concerned with its erosion of our ability to interact meaningfully with others. He quotes Simon Weil as saying, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity,” and suggests that according to that metric, our society’s generosity to others has fallen, that we’ve become “miserly” (Weil, qtd. in Foer, Foer).
Interestingly, both authors distance themselves from the anti-technology movement as they criticize digital media. “Being ‘anti-technology’ is perhaps the only thing more foolish than being unquestioningly ‘pro-technology’,” Foer asserts. Likewise, Marche writes that “nostalgia” for a pre-social media era is “pointless […], hypocritical and ungrateful” (69). These statements serve to underscore the importance of their arguments. A reader mustn’t dismiss us as anti-tech Luddites or unrealistic crusaders, they seem to be saying. We are people with a stake in the modern world, and our arguments should matter as much to you as they do to us.
What remains open for discussion, however, is what would a society taken over by Marche’s loneliness or Foer’s attention-stinginess look like? How might people interact in the worst versions of these essay’s bleak visions? Also, in the time since Marche’s essay (published in 2012) and Foer’s (published in 2013), how have changes in the social media landscape affected the problems they raise?
Progression 1, Assignment 4
Occasion for Writing (or the Exhibit): At this stage, it is time consider how your own personal experience (we will call this “experiential evidence”) can help you to facilitate a deeper analysis of the problem/question you are grappling with through your two texts (think back to the examples you’ve seen so far). If experiential evidence is not an option, consider an outside “occasion” or “exhibit” (a third thing) that helps to shed light on the tension your texts are exploring. This occasion or exhibit might serve as a contemporary example, a current manifestation of the problem your texts are grappling with. This could be an image/art object or another text you have read previously, found on your own through research, or come across in another class (or, of course, personal experience). In all cases, as you did when representing your essays, focus on specific details/evidence from this source that will help you to clarify, elaborate upon, and ultimately deepen the thinking work you’ve been doing so far.
To complete the exercise, think about two such possible examples and in a couple of comprehensive paragraphs for each reflect on how you imagine the experiential evidence/occasion/exhibit might play a role in deepening the idea you began exploring through your primary text; what would it allow you to say/contribute to the connections and complications already being explored?
Option 1
When I was in 12th grade, my school implemented a smartphone purge. Specially appointed staff members went hunting through people’s rooms (it was a boarding school), looking for phones and other Internet-capable devices. At the same time, “social media spies” created fake accounts and scoured Instagram for students of our high school. Anyone caught with either a device or a social media account could expect punishment ranging from suspension to expulsion. My high school was not located in an autocratic dictatorship; in fact, we were in the heart of New York City. But my school, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish yeshiva, adhered (at least somewhat) to the guidance of the spiritual leaders of the ultra-Orthodox community, who have been fighting a decades-long battle against communications technology in all its forms.
The rationale for such a ban, as expressed by leading rabbis in the community (the very nature of this conversation, obviously, is such that it does not take place across forums like the Internet and newspapers, making sourcing the material difficult. All information presented is based on firsthand knowledge and personal experience), is twofold: first, access to the Internet entails access to “pornography and blasphemy [kefirah, lit. ‘denial’].” Second, the usage of technology “degrades the human image.” In other words, technology entrenches characteristics that are non-human, such as the desire to constantly check our phones, even mid-conversation, in a mad scramble for constant updates, or the break-down of civil discourse in favor of online rancor. To the mind of many major religious authorities within ultra-Orthodoxy, these issues are serious enough that they warrant total technological isolationism, hence my school’s purge.
Like Marche and Foer, the aforementioned rabbis take issue with the effects media consumption has on our identity as humans. Rabbinic concerns about the “descending human image” echo Foer’s description of digital communication as a “diminished substitute” for real interaction and Marche’s concern of a vicarious and performative human experience (though, of course, sweeping characterizations of “the human form” represent a more extreme form of the argument than that presented by either author). Unlike Marche and Foer, however, these communal leaders prefer a more strident, aggressively anti-technology approach, something Marche and Foer take great pains to distance themselves from. For Marche and Foer, online media represents a powerful tool that we must utilize responsibly. For the ultra-Orthodox rabbis, it represents a powerful enemy which demands vigilance and action.
On the one hand, these forceful actions may seem like natural conclusions from the logic presented by the two writers. But they come with their own set of problems. On the surface level, technological abstinence leads to the removal of the “convenience” of “connection” that both authors discuss: the ability to reach anyone, anywhere at any time (Marche, Foer). While technology may be a “diminished substitute,” it is not a useless one, and Foer acknowledges that there are legitimate uses for every technological means of communication, from voicemail to email (Foer). Does an approach of throwing out the proverbial baby with the bathwater really benefit society? On the other hand, the motivation of religious leaders to encourage withdrawal from the Internet may run deeper than the human-focused concerns that Marche and Foer raise. When religious figures decry access to “blasphemy,” it may stem from a genuine attempt to protect people from seeing offensive content, but it might also be a response to a perceived threat. The Internet is an open forum which cultivates a certain independent, even subversive, spirit. Access to online communities means a weakening of communal influence over people’s lives; it puts people in touch with counterculture; and it provides a forum for the exposure of stories that powerful religious figures would perhaps prefer went untold in public. The Boston Globe is hardly ubiquitous, but everyone has Google. In other words, the very “connectedness” that Marche and Foer see as a tool that precipitated the social breakdown is what’s seen by many higher-ups in religious society as a threat. Would Marche and Foer consider this usage of media in that light? Or would they see it more as a productive form of online engagement?