The i-Gen, Digitalisation and Collapse of Discernment

With growing space of digitisation and hyper-connectivity globally, social media is a pulse of our communication, identity building and decision-making. Beyond the superficiality of filtered images, viral videos, and incessant scrolling is a much more sinister development, the phenomenon I branded as a microwave thinking – of late - I have been interacting with this kitchen item for purposes of quick fix meal service.

Anyway, this phenomenon is largely characterised by thoughtless, quick-fix decision-making tendency to favour instant gratification, inflate ego, over thoughtfulness, patience, and judgment. Cumulatively, these characteristics when repeatedly bring out an equally unhealthy culture of "cut off" which often result to aborted interactions including, ghosting, unfriending, and blocking. Reddit discussions brought me here. This emerging unhealthy culture is largely a by-product of social media becoming a key impediment to rational thoughts or a promoter of views that mislead.  As consequent, we decide how optimised digital platforms are cultivating a generation that is addicted to making quick and easy reactive decisions and is ill-equipped to handling any serious emotional and critical confrontation.

I read somewhere that Young adults who grew up on super-fast Wi-Fi and algorithmically generated content feeds tend to form decisions based upon popular feelings, emotions, and shallow observations, but I think all of us today from all the existing social stratification are guilty. Over time I have realised that these behaviours result from a false mental simulation by digital content creating a condition of anticipation or quick desire with minimal stroke. As a result, most decisions, including those that are most important such as choice of friends, values, beliefs, and romantic partners, are made within seconds, instead of reflecting, evaluating options, or pursuing wisdom. On a recent telephone chat with my Kenyan tribesman, appeared to agree with me that digital environment creates an illusion that force user’s mind to substitute, improve, and reject anything in turn, fostering a risky degradation of discernment.

Let me keep going reporting this convo as it was, he said, since discernment is concerned with the ability to analyse, empathise with others, tolerate ambiguity, and withhold gratification out of preference to more considered responses its limitation (as posed by social media) reduces the multidimensional human exchange into simplified transactional exchange - Which should be btw, next time I will write about " Social Reciprocity and Reciprocity itself in our interactions".

As such, our key focus is not on learning but rather on doing, not on relating but rather on cultivating. –This has culminated in most of us losing cognitive stamina to withstand internal emotionally-enriching conversations with even our peers. It appears to me that we have lost the knack to grapple with ideas, coping with conflict and endure discomfort without being ready to cut down the people and situations that cause them problems.

There are trending terms today - Cut off, block, negative energy, bs, add some more.

Now, the appearance of the culture of cutting off is not simply an outcome of changes in societal norms. There is pressure from every corner of society, comparisons, economic and financial struggles hence a holistic emotional developmental failure made possible through the architecture of social media itself. For instance, the nature of digital platforms such as Instagram, X, and Snapchat is to the attention of economy where ideas advertised to are customised with the intention of preventing toxicity or disagreement with users. As such, we would tend to act or think in the ‘version’ of what we see on our screens without having a contrasting thought about the lasting outcome. As a result, something that used to be seen as a drastic social steps now only requires a tap on a smartphone and can be accomplished without much explanation or emotional work.

Do you think such an acceptance of ghosting and unfriending is avoidant and at all not resolving? I think it socialises us so that "pain" becomes intolerable and interpersonal relations overthrown. Worse still, social media supports the idea that the personal mood at that moment takes precedence over any need to be understanding and reconciled. Such an outcome is of a generation that does not care about emotional frictions or becoming more physically lonely (even though digitally connected) – an outright decay in relationship-supporting discernment and blatant irony of isolation.

Even then, the digital content offered through algorithms is already curated, biased, and free of competing opinions, giving rise to isolated digital environments. For young people, critical thinking is now being replaced by such skewed realities, mainly because they still form the basis of their decisions because the reward structure of platforms encourages extremes rather than nuance, encourages conformity to a groupthink, and discourages thought. In this context, ambiguity is a sign of weakness and any slight conflicts result in social isolation. This often leads users to be isolated because of misunderstanding of the posts or holding different views. Consequently, their sense of what matters in life and relationships is compromised.

The culture of "cut off" and social media has struck out a generation that is characterised by impulsivity and emotional avoidance. The concept of microwave thinking is killing discernment because reflex actions have overtaken the ability to think. To modify our current trajectory, we should question the unhealthy digital conventions and provide young adults with the tools and principles they require to develop genuine, strong connections.

Image depiction of a resilient community in the future.

It determines the resilience of the communities in the future.

Edited/ Published By Nehemiah Kipserem MEd-MBA 2024