By Alexandre Duyck
Updated on
Virtual drinks parties, remote working, online schooling, video games: to maintain connections with our former lives, our computer screens and smartphones have become indispensable companions. Will we ever be able to detach ourselves from them? Here are our tips for a smooth transition.
Come on, there's no point hiding behind your screen. We've all seen this scene in recent weeks. Both parents working on their computers or on the phone at home; a teenager locked in their room playing PlayStation (have they even aired their room? Done their homework sent via Pro-note?); another child on Snapchat for hours. A glance at social media. Family, colleagues and their WhatsApp groups that you don't know how to get out of. And grandparents who are discovering GIFs, memes and videos and, thinking they're at the cutting edge of technology, bombard you with notifications.
We actually heard a grandmother who, upon discovering how to use a tablet, asked if «the internet also worked on Sundays?»
Screens are everywhere, even in sexuality
The figures are dizzying. The time spent on our applications Since the start of the health crisis? +70% %. +1,000% % for the duration of group calls on Facebook and Instagram. WhatsApp? +40% % usage; TikTok? Over a billion users. Online drinks parties, Work meetings and classes via Zoom: screens are everywhere. And they are becoming even more involved in our sexuality: +25% increase in visits to Pornhub, the most popular pornographic website, with a rise in subscriptions by women. But how are we going to disconnect from these devices that have helped us cope with lockdown?
«Imagine such a situation thirty years ago,» says Edgardo Paz, a psychologist in Paris. "Without the Internet, without the possibility of working from home, without any means of calling family abroad, with the only solution being to write letters that either didn't arrive or took so long to arrive? The psychological consequences would have been even worse."
Of course, but how can we restore human contact and physical interaction to their rightful place? «Will everyone rush out into the streets, to café terraces, to each other's homes when it becomes possible? I'm not so sure," admits the psychologist. I can't believe that such a global event won't leave its mark on our behaviour. It's much easier to slip into a new habit than to break out of it. Lockdown is the revenge of the introverts, “avoidant” people who are very comfortable at home. But even though my patients all tell me they are keeping in touch with their loved ones much more than before lockdown, they recognise that it is not enough. It leaves them feeling dissatisfied, with a sense of loss. Physical contact remains fundamental.»
