Expectations create frames for experiences. When they aren’t met, we feel disappointment, and when they are met, we feel satisfaction or some degree of reward. But where do these expectations come from? Marc Champagne of Kwantlen Polytechnic University uses phenomenology (the science of experience and consciousness) to indict smartphones and social media for altering our ability to reasonably perceive our worlds.
In a chapter from his new book Phenomenology and Phaneroscopy: A Neglected Chapter in the History of Ideas, Champagne examines how social media and smartphones can lead to less happiness and satisfaction for their users. Champagne argues that having constant access to exceptional photos, videos, etc. can cause us to view our own lives with dissatisfaction. This in turn can create a loop in which we, bored with our “unexceptional” surroundings, seek out the exceptional through increased smartphone use and engagement with social media. This loop robs us of our ability to appreciate the ordinary. He writes:
“We are always looking for something. We rarely just see. As a result, we foreground some aspects of experience at the expense of others. Pausing the machinery of such goal-driven perception is the mission of phenomenology.”
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I have a smart phone. It’s blue and ever so smart. It is one of those old fashioned phones with the ring of numbers on the front. It hasn’t rang for 3 decades. Have a nice day Americans who although mad still have a voice that sounds like the first light of dawn, and still has smiles that could melt mountains.
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