‘Talk face-to-face to heal fractured lives’

WE are living in an increasingly fractured society whose multi-layered decline has been expressed in a number of recent news reports and features.

I refer to articles on the passing of nightclubs and pubs in our area, as well as the closure of familiar shops.

It’s also been reported that across the UK, visits to major tourist attractions are still below pre-covid levels.

The number of church and chapel buildings that stand derelict are part of the same pattern that has been triggered by the fact that many people are just not going out and mixing with each other any more.

It’s easy to blame Covid and its lingering effects on society, or the cost of living crisis for the present social and economic climate, but I think the reasons for today’s more insular world go deeper than that.

For me, James Smith of the Leedsbased post-punk band, Yard Act, got it spot-on recently: “I feel like we’re distracted constantly [and that] the internet and social media is making us an angry but useless species that cannot focus on anything for more than five minutes.”

We have become a less courteous, less cohesive society. This is manifesting itself in increased levels of shoplifting and in the increased verbal abuse suffered by public sector workers in such as shops, doctors’ surgeries and pharmacies.

Too much screentime and the public’s insistence on gorging on the intellectual candy floss of social networking has undermined proper communication skills and made people selfish and downright boring.

Face-to-face interaction with other people is needed, lest we all end up speaking a version of George Orwell’s duckspeak.

Mervyn Edwards