This year proved once and for all: screens are no substitute for real life
How we will ultimately remember the pandemic of 2020 is not yet known. Right now, it is the omnipotent crisis, dominating every waking moment. For those with any interest in the news, there are the daily death totals, surpassing those of 9/11, and reminders that a vaccine is here but not here, still many months away from ending this hell for good.
But a more deadly pandemic in 1918 and 1919 was largely lost to history, swallowed by the end of the first world war and the roaring 20s, the mass death hardly making a groove in the longterm psyche of the nation. The generation that lived through coronavirus may talk about it until they die or choose, like their ancestors in the early 20th century, to bury it away and focus on new horizons.
Covid-19 has shown us, at least, what will be necessary and what we can absolutely do without. There are white-collar jobs that can be performed adequately from home. For some companies, large offices in central business districts are an extravagant waste of money. Hygiene, we hope, will change forever, with routine hand-washing and occasional mask-wearing in crowded areas becoming normalized in America. One hundred years ago, survivors of the flu pandemic learned about the importance of fresh air and proper ventilation, and this is a lesson we were forced, under horrific circumstances, to internalize anew.
We learned, too, what it is we don’t want – a world utterly consumed by screens. Yes, we will maintain our smartphone addictions, and laptops and tablets will continue to consume much of our time inside our homes. The pandemic has boosted Zoom stock by 500%. For many of us, this has been 2020: one Zoom after another, human faces in little boxes. In the early months of the pandemic, there were Zoom birthday parties, Zoom cocktails, Zoom Easters and Zoom Passovers. The life we had lost needed to be approximated, as much as possible, by Zoomworld, forging connections and alleviating boredom.
After a while, I didn’t want to Zoom any more. I’m sure I wasn’t alone. Each drifting gaze, faulty connection, and wistful joke about the time we’d all be indoors at the bar again was a reminder of what I had lost. As the year drifted on and I tried to navigate a world with such conflicting public health guidance, friend meet-ups sporadically scheduled, I knew that I never wanted to endure another social interaction on a screen again. It was reality flattened and condensed, drained of what it should be. The longer I spoke to the distant, pixelated face in front of me, the more I remembered that this facsimile of my prior life wasn’t anything close to what I wanted.
Children had it worse. For years, tech maximalists had sold us a future of education-by-screen; why have physical classrooms at all? The internet offered unlimited possibility. Information was everywhere, easily summoned at a keystroke. Students of the 21st-century classroom would merely need lessons uploaded to their screens. A teacher only had to be a face trapped in a sleek tablet.
As we’ve learned, remote learning in public schools has been a disaster. Yawning inequality gaps have only been exacerbated, with the wealthiest students enjoying an in-person education at private schools while poorer students suffer in school districts that have sent many of them home. Not all students have functioning internet. Others live in chaotic households that make daily learning impossible. In December, families sued the state of California, alleging school districts failed to provide “basic educational
equality” for children of color from lowincome backgrounds during the pandemic.
Rectifying this divide – universal broadband access is a worthy goal – would make remote learning more viable, but it is still a lackluster substitute for the socialization that comes with education in a physical classroom. Students make friends, learn from each other, and form crucial bonds with their teachers. Young children are in particular need of in-person learning. Adequate mental and emotional development can’t happen in isolation.
Many people understood this before the pandemic. But for a long period of time, there were those that argued that more tech would bolster the education experience. To boost test scores – of course, big tech loved a lengthy standardized test – just pay for an interactive whiteboard in every classroom and shell out for individual tablets. Why was this better? Well, it was shiny and new.
Higher education, long overpriced, faces its own post-pandemic reckoning, with many smaller schools threatened with closure. College students may find some educational functions can be performed remotely. Yet the MOOC revolution and online-only schools will not be able to supplant the surviving colleges and universities that prioritize inperson education. Few students that endured a year of Zoom classes will demand more of them when the pandemic ends. Professors, meanwhile, will be eager to resume life inside a classroom, where lively discussions and genuine learning can take place naturally without the mediator of a Zoom screen.
The pandemic made it easy to imagine an approaching dystopia: one in which, in the coming years, we would all sequester ourselves away from light and air, too terrified to venture outdoors. Instead of heading to the bar or the gym, we would build worlds of our own within our four walls, content to approximate the reality we once knew.
Instead, we rediscovered parks and trails, flocked to beaches, and revolutionized city streets with outdoor dining. We wearied of our devices. There is no app or program that can replicate a friend’s laughter across the table or a teacher’s lesson at the front of a classroom. After the pandemic, in a post-vaccination world, we will race back to our old lives. Zoomworld will belong to history.
Ross Barkan is a writer based in New York City
Students make friends, learn from each other, and form crucial bonds with their teachers