Sex, Coke, and Read Receipts.

If I had a nickel for every hand wringing headline that I've seen about the degradation of modern communication between young adults, I wouldn't be rich, but both my pants pockets would be full of nickels. But I am not interested in talking about tinder or worse, “hookup culture” (which many studies suggest doesnt actually exist) https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/08/hookup-culture-isnt-real/312235/. Rather, I want to talk about an increasingly omnipresent phenomena that has me utterly under its thumb. I am of course talking about read receipts.

On iMessage, the notifications that alert a recipient when you've consumed the communication nugget they sent you are still optional. However, with both facebook messenger and snapchat, these notifications are baked in from the start. I would argue that this is a purposeful and powerful move by tech companies, working to get us ever more addicted to their products.

On a recent episode of Vox’s always insightful podcast “The Weeds”, Ezra Klein discusses how Facebook made read receipts an automatic feature https://www.vox.com/the-weeds, calling it “a behavioral trigger” and an essential part of facebook's business model, which is driven by and demands engagement. Read receipts raise the stakes of how we communicate electronically and feeds many of our technological neuroses.

The problem begins with how much we like texting in the first place. In the case of both snapchat and messenger, the application also withholds information about the content of the incoming message was well (you get a preview in iMessage). Even with the preview, research has borne out the hypothesis that texting is addictive and that we can not help but look when we get a notification of a new message https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brain-wise/201209/why-were-all-addicted-texts-twitter-and-google because it acts as dopamine drip, rewarding our pleasure and communication centers with each buzz and ring. It would appear that the only things that our brain likes more than a new text is a line of cocaine or an orgasm.

When we add read receipts into the techno-pharmacological mix, the cocktail curdles even further. Central in Brave New World is the theme of endless stimulation and connection to others. The converse of this is the pain and discomfort of rejection and isolation. Read receipts are powerful not only because we don't want to (as Ezra Klein said) “look like an asshole” but because we yearn to know that we have been heard, that we have successfully communicated. Of course, the very next thing we desire is to be granted more attention, and have our query or comment immediately addressed. We have been socially and pharmacologically conditioned to desire read receipts, and to do their bidding at all times.

So here we are, caught in this vice of societal pressures and a lesser form of the high that only hard drugs used to be able to deliver. Of course, we can't ignore good old fashioned narcissism either. We want responses because we want the world to revolve around us, if only for a moment. All while large tech companies take advantage by placing more and more advertisements on the screens we’ve been programed to want and need at all times. It is the perfect intersection of techno-science and social conditioning, harnessed to generate engagement and clicks. No one should be surprised that it's making us crazy. A recent Atlantic article argues that increased phone usage is driving the skyrocketing anxiety and depression reported by this generation of teenagers. Read receipts are part of this phenomena, and Facebook and Snapchat know it. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the-smartphone-destroyed-a-generation/534198/

Teenagers don't party as much, and don't have as much sex as they used to. Why should they when they can get the same high without the medical and emotional risks that intimacy or tipsiness bring? Pascal said that “all of man’s problems stem from an inability to sit quietly in a room alone”. I am not sure that the solution is for us all to become Carthusian monks, but I don't think his diagnosis is all that far off, either.