how do we restore civility?

On my mind this morning is an article I read about so-called Gen Z young people (generally born after 2000), electronics, and social media. What really caught my attention was a statistic measuring screen usage. Most of the thousand-odd young people surveyed indicated that their screen usage is more than five hours a day, on average, and for a good many it is more like eight-plus hours a day.

It seems to me that this means teens and twenty-somethings rely on electronic devices for most of their interaction with other people. I have noticed, and perhaps you have, too, the pervasiveness of cell phones, and how typical it is to see people using them a lot — in line at the grocery store, walking down the street, at restaurants, at sports and theater events, and while driving  a car. The article I read puts hard data behind these observations.

I do not know how all this electronics usage is shaping basic perception — how people who are growing up with it experience other people, how able they are to sustain attention on something, how deep their knowledge goes (when so much information about complicated things comes in sound bytes). But it concerns me.

As an example, many of you know that I am keenly concerned with the war between Israel and Hamas. I have long-standing ties with local rabbis and other members of the Jewish community, and have continued to follow several Israeli political thinkers whom I met when I went to Israel in 2006. Several very nuanced things seem clear to me:

there is no monolithic “Israeli” or “Jewish” perspective on this war;

the majority of more liberal Jews, who vehemently oppose the Netanyahu administration and its methods in this war, and who are sympathetic with the plight of people living in Gaza and the West Bank, find themselves isolated from long-standing friendships and other relationships as many of their friends are uncritically pro-Palestinian;

there seems to be a lack of critical thinking about the parties directly and indirectly involved with the war — the Hamas leaders and fighters who instigated it; Gazans who oppose Hamas; financial supporters of Hamas from nearby and more distant countries; ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel; radical left-wing Jews in Israel; Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank; diaspora Jews of many and varied political and religious persuasions; American political leaders; and more — and how clearly there is no simple, two-sides formula to this conflict.

In such a complex and tragic situation, it seems to me that many people are forming opinions based on the skimpiest of information. Let alone television (cable or network), there are numerous “articles”, memes, videos, and other superficial messages about the war. How, I wonder, are people who rely heavily on electronic devices for their information (and who access these devices for more than five hours a day) going to be well-informed before they join rallies or send money or close down colleges?

I’m not sure what to do about this situation. It seems like our now-violence-prone political rhetoric and actions — how do we restore civility once these things become commonplace? But I do think we can pay attention to younger people. We can try to understand and empathize with them.

According to the article I read, while many (most?) Gen Z young people access electronics for much or most of their days, a majority also indicated a wish that they could self-regulate, and even that social media platforms had never been invented. Like the majority of smokers (according to the article) these young people wish they could kick this habit that so dominates their days.

 In Christ,

Lee