Techonology Helping Nation's Scholars To Shape Our Depersonalized Future

Today’s college students are eschewing face-to-face conversation for the seemingly safer interactions provided by Facebook and texting, where they are less likely to endure the discomfort of not having someone respond to their personal overtures. Even worse, many are pretending to be engaged with their electronic devices rather than risk a real-life “rejection.” Tufts senior Charlotte Steinway sets the scene.

One friend, a junior who’s on the shy side, told me she relies heavily on her electronic escape hatch. “I’ll walk by someone, I’ll have my iPod in, even if it’s not on, and they’ll think I didn’t say hi because I was distracted. So it gives me an excuse.’’

Another classmate admits she’s turned to “fauxting,’’ fake texting when she realizes that someone she knows is about to actively ignore her. Given an option, there isn’t a college student out there who will choose to invite rejection. “Everyone wants everyone else to say hi but doesn’t want to be the person saying hi,’’ as my housemate put it. We use cellphones to mediate they way others perceive us; if we’re texting or calling a friend, we appear sought after, occupied, in demand.

But the tragic, isolating thing is that we reach for our devices because we don’t want to seem lonely — which is causing us to avoid our peers and actually be lonely.

Whether “fauxting” genuinely represents a new trend or is just the latest development in a long line of tactics aimed at avoiding embarrassment such as “pretending to be looking at something else” or “awkwardly walking in the other direction,” it’s easy enough to see how the burning shame of being ignored is somehow more tolerable when one can simultaneously be playing BrickBreaker. Everything is easier for kids today.