I had an interesting, yet heartbreaking conversation with my daughter recently.
She apparently suffers from anxiety when in very crowded rooms. This didn’t initially surprise me, because I am also no fan of packed places. They tend to be hot, smelly and people bump into you a lot.
But this wasn’t the source of my daughter’s issues. She truly has a fear that something bad will happen – such as an act of violence. There is a big difference between feeling uncomfortable in a crowd and fearing you will be shot.
I can not stand the fact that we have come to a place in society where a young person fears going to a concert or sporting event because large crowds are targets. And my frustration with this is aimed in many directions.
First off, the chances of being impacted by some random act of mass violence are extremely slim. But because of the attention thrust upon these incidents, their prevalence is magnified greatly. Obviously there have been shootings and even bombings at concerts, but not in the numbers that should play into my child’s decision making on attending events.
Consider this, the 2017 Las Vegas concert shooter killed 58 people. This event looms in the minds of people, like my daughter, and is a source of anxiety that binds them up.
But, in 2003, 100 people were killed in a night club fire sparked by pyrotechnics at a Great White concert in Rhode Island. But my kid doesn’t fear burning alive in a crowd, she fears being shot. I would argue that most people don’t ever consider fire risks at a concert, but any loud noise has them looking for the source of the gunfire.
So what has changed between 2003 and now?
We’ve digitized our lives.
We spend so much time online, absorbing fragments of information, that we don’t live in the world, we simply observe it. We float around online reading that Yellowstone is a volcanic timebomb and there are 50 things in our kitchens that can kill us. We gravitate toward stories about planet-ending asteroids and read that sharks eat everything that steps in the ocean.
We scroll through Facebook, skimming a Cliff Notes version of the world around us and believing we are better informed. But the funny thing about Cliff Notes is, they don’t give you the real flavor of the text. You lose the nuance of the writing and an entire book is flattened into a highlight reel.
And that is what we are doing by immersing ourselves in an online world. We are viewing the Sportcenter version of life – all homeruns and no foul balls. We are conditioning ourselves to think the fringe elements of life are the norm. We only recognize the sensational, whether it’s a workplace shooting or the glamorous lifestyle of someone we’ve never met. And because of this, we think shootings happen frequently and most people are rich. In reality, most people struggle financially and that car in your driveway is the most deadly instrument you come in contact with.
And when we do finally unplug from the digital world and venture outside, we assume bad things are waiting for us around every corner and we grapple with feelings of failure because we are not as polished as the people we see on Instagram.
But it’s all online embellishment. Your friend in Florida might post a pictured of their perfectly manicured lawn, but they crop out their house covered in peeling paint. In the real world cute puppy dogs and smiling babies are far more prevalent than suicide bombers.
I read a friend’s Facebook post the other day in which he said he felt like he did not fit in because he hadn’t started a family yet and everyone his age had accomplished more than him. The guy is 29, owns a home and just finished putting himself through college. People can start families on a whim, but nobody ever accidently earned a degree. Yet this guy felt like life was passing him by because of all the perfectly posed pictures he saw online. But it’s all an illusion. The funny thing about Facebook is that you see a lot of pictures taken at the Cheesecake Factory, but nobody every seems to capture that moment when mom and dad are screaming at each other while little Jimmy hides in the closet.
But this online world molds all of our expectations and we carry terrible amounts of stress because of it. My friend expects he should have a family by now. My daughter expects to be shot at a concert. And I expect that my child is emotionally scarred because I did not put enough effort into her graduation party, according to Facebook posts from other parties.
To my defense, I didn’t even know cupcake towers were a thing.
-Chad Williamson is the managing editor at the Journal-Tribune.