Amusing Ourselves to Death

(published on pressone.ph, July 13, 2024)

Social Media is hazardous to your health! That is the label that the US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murphy wants to be placed on all social media platforms, like the warning labels placed on alcohol and cigarettes. Accordingly, study after study now reveal that more people, especially the youth, are suffering from various mental health issues like depression, loneliness, and anxiety. And the major cause of all these is social media, with Americans spending on the average 5 hours a day on the internet or social media. Screen time has become an addiction and has caused not just mental problems but, with lack of sleep and exercise, physical health issues as well. In the long run, of course, all these problems would impact on society as well, there being fewer human interactions and therefore weaker real human relationships on which a strong society or nation is founded.

As early as 1985, Neil Postman was already warning us about this. Postman was a communications specialist and taught at colleges and universities across the USA. He wrote many books, but what catapulted him to the national spotlight was his seminal book entitled “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business.” And in this contained his dire warning. At that time, of course, he was contending with television; the Internet and computers were still being developed then; but what he wrote about the boob tube is certainly applicable to the ubiquitous screens today, i.e. computers and cellphones.

Postman was however not concerned about our mental or even physical health; rather, as the title of his book suggests, he was concerned with public discourse, or specifically, how the quality of the important conversations we do has been corrupted by media technologies. And this is where he was most prescient. We now say that the widespread disinformation or misinformation in social media today has seriously threatened our democracies and might have in fact already led to the downfall of governments across the globe. This is precisely Postman’s point: media has diminished our schools, our worship, and our politics, at the detriment of civilized society.

In “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” he first reminisces of a time when the United States of America was in its nascent stage, when British immigrants were just establishing themselves in the New World. His point, everybody then read! With the invention of the printing press and the publication of books, people in Europe and in the new territories got into the habit of reading. And this influenced the public discourse. He writes, for example, how Abraham Lincoln and other politicians went around the country debating in plazas or auditoriums for more than six or eight hours and crowds listened in intently. But then came the telegraph. And for the first time in the history of the world, people found out what was happening in other parts of the globe in real-time.

The problem with this media technology, however, Postman laments, is that, it could only give you brief information, minus the important context to help you process it. The information it provided about people and events elsewhere was pointless or insignificant, Postman adds, because no one could actually do anything about them–something that our generation experiences, being inundated by a surfeit of information, mostly useless, from social media.

For Postman, it went downhill from there. Especially with the invention of the idiot box or television which spread like wildfire among the US populace. Show business became the format of all public discourses. Following this format, everything needed to be entertaining. Tragically, three important sectors deteriorated because of this. First, the Schools. Sesame Street, Postman says, became the model of how teachers should design lesson plans. Some matters or subjects, however, required more serious attention and reflection, and did not naturally lend to fun and entertainment. With the use of television in classes, furthermore, reading as a skill declined. Second, Religion. Churches in the US, competing for bigger audiences, invaded television. So-called tele-evangelists were born and became instant celebrities.

However, emotionalism, sensationalism, and again, entertainment, which were the qualities of TV shows, only diluted if not corrupted the Gospel message. Even today, the so-called prosperity Gospel or cafeteria Christianity, which are distortions or mutations of the Christian message, continue to plague the Churches in the US. Finally, and perhaps for Postman the most critical to American public life, Politics. Political discourse, he said, aped or imitated TV Commercials. They needed to be short, crisp, and entertaining. And thus emerged political slogans or what we now call memes which like TV advertisements were just sound-bites amounting to nothing. Political speeches and policy discussions then became merely rhetorical rather than substantial and sincere. Unlike the long speaking tours of the 17th and 18th centuries, they became like TV shows.

In all these, Postman clarifies that he was not against entertainment at all. We are naturally entertained by TV dramas or sports. But entertainment has its place, and for him, it should not influence or mold the critical conversations, discussion, and discourse we engage in in our schools, Churches, and politics. These are critical human endeavors or enterprises that need careful and serious attention. Entertainment cannot be the be-all and end-all of human existence and societal life.

Postman’s warning about the power of media to shape our lives and in particular the negative influence it has wrought on our politics can be summed up by his poignant words. He compares two futurists, George Orwell, who famously wrote Animal Farm and 1984, and Aldous Huxley, who wrote Brave New World. He writes: “What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism.

Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture… As Huxley remarked, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny ‘failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.’ In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.”

It appears now that Huxley, according to Postman, was right rather than Orwell. There is a lot at stake then, more than youth’s passing angsts.