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Social isolation has transpired into a new norm due to the CoronaVirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, but when we analyze the playing fields, technology itself has been the byproduct of social isolation since its existence. Researchers of Pew Research Center, Hampton, Sessions, and Her (2009) found that before the release of this viral plague, technology, particularly smartphones and the internet, has pulled people away from traditional (physical) gatherings and social interactions. Hunt et al. (2018) further this notion speculating that most people, specifically adolescents and young adults, those born into the digital era, preferred communication and socialization through computer-assisted aid, thus avoiding physical encounters. So, given the current nature of the unprecedented circumstance, this is without consequence to this populations but can be detrimentally stressful and conflict-inducing for parents, couples, and others.

Being forced to say indoors for weeks to months at a time and being unable to engage in outdoor social proclivities can be stressful for anyone. However, depending on the people or persons that are locked inside with you it can produce significant benefits and implications. Advantages are related to no travel time for some, and being afforded the ability to multitask and conduct business as usual from the privacy of your own home. People are learning and working from home, some in their pajamas, or while sitting in front of a television. People can engage in online communities and social networking sites. As people still have access to various technologies, the internet, mobile devices, that provides permanently online and permanently connected (POPC) capacity (Parry, 2019), which keeps them virtually interlocked with peers, colleagues, and family members. Modernized tech trends like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Zoom, Google, the internet, and online communities generally receive more traffic than ever before, which has mandated speedy modifications and renovations. According to Anderson and Vogels (2020), it would be detrimental if technical outages or digital disruption were to occur amid this pandemic. This is particularly true for the most vulnerable groups, elderly persons whose preferred method of communication is face-to-face interaction, but given this worst-case scenario, they have succumbed to rely on technology for social richness. Relative to such, research has found that when older adults use technology, it can proliferate their sense of connectedness and health while systematically reducing feelings of loneliness (Chopik, 2016), henceforth, social isolation. Though technology has dimmed and weakened person-to-person interactions and people have substituted virtual interactions for real-time happening, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania also found that excessive use technology is linked to increased levels of anxiety, depression, loneliness, particularly among young adults. They have too found that reactive loneliness, as people who live alone, have relocated to a new area where they do not know anyone, are recently divorce or experienced the lost of their loved one can also experience increased levels of lonesomeness (Novotney, 2019). However, the resolve for the youger generations as a way to ameliorate these adverse feelings, emotions, and enhance their psychological well-being is through the diminution of time consciously embedded in virtual worlds and being more mentally involved in physical environments and interactions (Hunt, Marx, Lipson, & Young, 2018). 

Technology has been proven to provide users with a sense of connectedness, belongingness, autonomy, authenticity, reduced lonesomeness, as well as the wherewithal of self-representations and management, and to step out of their actual self and into their desired self (Triberti, Durosini, Aschieri, Villani, & Riva, 2017). Digital communication infrastructures offer digital dexterities for persons to engage in corroborative and collaborative undertakings. Technically-based communications, during physical, social isolation does not mean mental isolation as people can use this time to reevaluate the life significances and strengthen family bonds. Millions of Americans were unfortunately terminated from their jobs, forcing them into financial and psychological turmoil. However, as a significant advantage is that some people have shown profound resilience and compassion for others, those affected and unaffected.

Conversely, people have started to release their inner creativity and constructed a diversified worldwide. Futuristically, people are conducting critical research on their future endeavors and navigating methods to sustain self-efficacy, self-actualization, and personification, and have started to employ self-care into their daily activity. Furthermore, this current run of the mill experience has caused people to pay more attention to their health and combat life complexities. 

The lack of physical accessibility to others due to the risks of exposure and transmission of this ghostly and inherently deadly disease has remarkably increased anxiety and concern. No one knows what the results would entail. No one knows when this will end. Nevertheless, being forced into social isolation is not necessarily a bad thing and can be quite proliferating. The use of technology for socialization, when monitored and used appropriately, can add substance to an individual’s life, increase their life satisfaction, psychological and subjective well-being, produce social richness, and reduce adverse feelings and emotions.

References

Anderson, M., & Vogels, E. A. (2020, March 31). Americans turn to technology during COVID-9 outbreak, say an outage would be a problem. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/03/31/americans-turn-to-technology-during-covid-19-outbreak-say-an-outage-would-be-a-problem/

Chopik, W. J. (2016). The benefits of social technology use among older adults are mediated by reduced loneliness. Cyber psychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 19(9),  https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2016.0151

Hampton, K. N., Sessions, L. F., & Her, E. J. (2009, November 4). Social isolation and new technology. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2009/11/04/social-isolation-and-new-technology/

Hunt, M. G., Marx, R., Lipson, C., & Young, J. (2018). No more FOMO: Limiting social media decrease loneliness and depression. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 37(10), 751-768. https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.2018.37.10.751

Novotney, A. (2019, May). The risks of social isolation: Psychologists are studying how to combat loneliness in those most at risk, such as older adults. American Psychological Association, 50(5), 32. https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/05/ce-corner-isolation

Parry, D. A. (2019). Permanently online, permanently connected: living and communicating in a POPC world. Information, Communication & Society, 22(12), 1841-1844. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2019.1590441   

Triberti, S., Durosini, I., Aschieri, F., Villani, D., & Riva, G. (2017). Changing avatars, changing selves? The influence of social and contextual expectations on digital rendition of identity. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 20(8), 501-507. https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2016.0424

On one end of the spectrum, the COVID-19 pandemic is still in full effect. People, particularly underrepresented and underserved populations, continue to lose their lives due to this ghostly viral plague. People continue to self-isolation to ensure the safety of others. And people continue to wear their mask to omit the risk of spreading the virus to others given that they asymptomatic. However, looking at the other end of the spectrum, people, specifically black Americans, continue to lose their lives to the hands of others, particularly law enforcement, those who have a civil duty to protect the lives of everyone, similar, or polar opposite. 

On May 25, 2020, the world watched as the life was unlawfully and unnecessarily taken from a Minnesota resident, Mr. George Floyd, where he pleaded for his life, bellowing the words, “I can’t breathe”, and calling for his mother. Yet, the four Minnesota police officers stood, along with multiple passerby and onlookers, stood and watched while one of the three officers lynched Mr. George Floyd, pinning him down with his knee to his neck for approximately nine minutes, without struggle and while being detained by handcuffs. The office showed no concern for Mr. Floyd’s unrest and was not charged for his murder, nor were the other three officers held accountable for their lack of intervention and lack of judgement.

As a result of reduced swift and expeditious efforts to bring charges against the perpetrators, millions of people, Americans and other countries, have taken to the streets to protest injustice, inequality, police brutality, civil unrest, for civil rights, and to bring the nation together where we all come together and stand together from this day forward. Some individuals are peacefully protesting, they are well-behaved and abiding by governed rules, while others substantially and obstructively bring havoc and upheaval. People are burning buildings and cars, looting, destroying small and large businesses just to make a point. People are putting their livelihood at risk, blacks, whites, Asians, Indians, Chinese, and others, everyone of all nationalities and ethnic background, to show that this is not OK. There are however, some person that are egregiously going against what the rallies and protest stands for, as Antifa and antiracial groups have used peaceful protests as an ostentatious crutch, leverage, to blend in and make a mockery out of what was supposed to be a good and respectful deed. 

Most of us look to leaders to determine which actions we would take. Most of us look to friends, family, significant others, to decide what is right and to determine where we stand. If we all took it upon ourselves to become our own leaders, our own person, a person who stands in their own right, and stop being followers, then Mr. George Floyd situations could be avoided. This is not to say that this is the answer, but what we all know and have known, and will continue to know tomorrow and for the rest of our lives is behaviors are sparked from attitudes and ignorance. Our attitudes guided by our upbringing. Our attitudes, moral, values, and hatred, starts at home through our upbringing. Children take on the attitudes of their parents, and if their parents have an outright hatred attitude then the child is going to possess those same characteristics. It is not until one steps outside of their comfort zone and take on an attitude of their own that things in life would change. People don’t have an innate need to hate, bully, chastise, kill, or steal. Nor do they have a distinctive need to carry out frivolous, malevolent, or ill-intent behaviors. There have and will continue to be dynamisms of inferiority and superiority. But when it comes to humanity, there is no hierarchy to say that one person should be treated better than the other, especially when it comes to life or death situation.

The inevitable is going to happen and people are going to die, but they don’t have to die by the hand of others who feel as through their lives don’t matter. All lives matter, blacks, while and whoever you claim yourself to be. People who live in the land of the free should not have to walk around like their walking on pins and needles. They should be able to walk around with their head held up high and with confidence. People should feel equivalent and not as though they are denied opportunities because their skin color and who they affiliate themselves with. Some of the most educated, decorated, and lucrative blacks/others are denied opportunities, exiled, and ostracized due to their physical appearances. Even some of the richest people of color/other are still made to feel as they are the poorest in the land. People are fighting for freedom. They are screaming for equality, they are laying down for the law, and they are taking a knee for unity. They are struggling to breathe the air that we all share while walking or running down the street, and while driving vehicles. 

But what does all of this mean for everyone, blacks, whites, Latinos, Asians, and others? What is going to happen once George Floyd is laid to rest? What is going to happen after the pandemic has subsided and we return back to normalcy? What is going to happen when people stop marching, ranting, screaming and yelling they can’t breathe? What is going to happen in American and other countries around the world that have been protesting? Does anyone know? Is there really an answer? Will there ever be equality or swift justices for cases like George Floyd and all those others who proceeds him in unlawful and personal demeaning deaths? Will there ever be equal opportunities in the job market, education, housing and bank loans? How will the socioeconomic, red tapping, and digital gaps be bridges, or will they ever? 

It seems that no one person have the answer to these questions. However, if people of all generations, all ethnical and socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds come together united as one, there is great hope and opportunity that we can lay the unrest to rest. 

To the Family of Mr. George Floyd and all of those who have unlawfully and unnecessarily lost someone to the hands of others.

We are resilient. We will persevere. We will come out stronger than ever, even amid the coronavirus outbreak and incivility.

Updated on June 3, 2020… CNN correspondent has found that all officers involved in this murder will be charged. See link to read more details. https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/03/us/george-floyd-officers-charges/index.html

Welcome to my AuPearce’s Blog. Please feel free to stay awhile and share your thoughts and opinions related to the subject at hand. Comments and suggestions are welcomed.

Angela Pearce is Doctoral Student at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, AZ. She’s current working on her Doctoral of Philosphy in Psychology with an emphasis on Technology, Learning, and Psychology. She has working in the IT Community for most of her career as a Computer/Support Analyst, Leader, Administrator, and Consultant. She wishes to aid others in becoming a self-expert, to increase their self-actualization, self-efficacy, and construct themselves a better future and reduce the impact that technology has placed on their livelihoods and interpersonal interactions.

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