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Your phone is the opposite of awe
Feeds versus awe
Awe is about systems. Hearing music, a person gets it all at once, right then. A feed is made of micro things, and its content is rarely inspiring even though all of it could be.
Try recalling anything specific from yesterday's social media. A great deal of sensory input went in, and often nothing stayed. Inspiring experiences go the other way: a first concert, a first love, a first kiss, and even a first breakup are never forgotten.
In a study of 2,600 people around the world about what makes them feel awe, nobody named Meta, Facebook, or Instagram.
Thinner shared life
Shared experience has thinned out too. Going to movies is down 40%, and people listen to music together less than they used to. A text can take 18 hours to get a reply, and on Zoom people look at the screen or the camera, so eye contact drops.
Why does scrolling leave so few memories?
Memory formation depends on attention at the moment of encoding. Experiments by Fergus Craik and colleagues in 1996 showed that dividing attention while studying material sharply reduced later recall. A feed delivers a new item every few seconds, so each one gets only a sliver of attention. Distinct, emotionally charged events get far more attention and are encoded more deeply.
Why do first experiences stay so vivid?
Novel events get extra processing because the brain has no existing pattern to file them under. Memory researchers describe a reminiscence bump: people recall a disproportionate number of memories from roughly ages 10 to 30. David Rubin, Scott Wetzler, and Robert Nebes documented the bump in a 1986 analysis of autobiographical memory. Firsts such as a first concert or first love cluster in that stretch.
How does Zoom change eye contact?
On a video call the camera sits above or beside the screen. Looking at a person's eyes on the screen means looking away from the lens, so each side sees the other gazing slightly off. Stanford researcher Jeremy Bailenson listed excessive close-up eye gaze as one cause of video call fatigue in a 2021 paper in Technology, Mind, and Behavior. In an in-person meeting, gaze moves around the room and rarely locks on one face for long.
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