What's driving kids toward their fanatical electronic networking? There is increasing evidence that more is involved than smart phones, PCs, and other technological marvels. Hidden factors rooted in our genetic heritage may be at work. "Humans form social networks because th e benefits of a connected life outweigh the costs," says Nicholas Christakis, professor of sociology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and professor of medicine and medical sociology at Harvard Medical School.
Christakis and James Fowler, associate professor at University of California-San Diego in the Department of Political Science, are coauthors of the recent book Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives. They have shown that cooperative behavior is contagious, and that it spreads downstream from a single individual in a cascade of influence that involves dozens more individuals, reaching at least "three degrees of separation." Their research shows that the initiating influence can involve a variety of behaviors, emotions and ideas, including kindness, happiness, and generosity.
Seen from this perspective, it isn't the electronic gizmos and doodads that have caused an obsession with networking in our kids; rather, the gadgets may simply make it possible for them to live out their underlying genetic predispositions for cooperation and empathy.
The ultimate incentive for kids' interconnected, empathic way of relating to one another may be that it, well, feels good. Beginning in the late 1980s, reports of the "helper's high" began to surface -- a feeling, following selfless service to others, of exhilaration and a burst of energy followed by a period of calm and serenity. , The feeling was similar to that following intense physical exercise. Researcher Allan Luks studied over 3,000 Americans involved in volunteer services and found that the feeling lasted several weeks, and that the euphoric sensation returned when they remembered the action. The helper's high is accompanied by positive changes in the body's immune function and a lower level of stress hormones. As Ralph Chislett, a sixteen-year-old whose volunteerism involved delivering supplies to a post-ER recovery unit at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, said, "Volunteering helps you become a better person. You get a good feeling when you're helping people because you're making a difference in their lives." Steve Culbertson, president of Youth Service America, a volunteer resource center in Washington, D.C., said, "It gets under your skin. The real big secret to service to others is the majority of the benefits accrue to you. It just becomes who you are. It's not something you pick or choose; it's just part of your nature and makeup."
Although not all teen volunteerism is altruistic -- some schools make volunteer work a requirement for graduation -- today's teens are nonetheless volunteering more than any other generation in history. According to Independent Sector, a coalition of not-for-profit organizations and foundations based in Washington, D.C., 59 percent of teens volunteer an average of 3.5 hours per week. Annually, that's 13.3 million volunteers totaling 2.4 billion hours at a total economic value of $7.7 billion.
It may be no accident that the most plugged-in generation in history is also the most volunteer-prone. The empathic urge may underlie both areas of behavior. In fact, electronic connectivity and volunteerism have proved to be inseparable. Disaster relief efforts following the Haitian earthquake in January 2010 were largely made possible by an unprecedented mobile electronic communications effort. When one clinic texted that it needed fuel for its generator, the Red Cross responded in 20 minutes. Translators volunteered their efforts electronically from faraway locations without ever setting sight on Haiti. Within a few days a map was constructed via satellite pictures by a firm in Southhampton, UK, showing every one of the 5,000 collapsed buildings in Port-au-Prince. A Craig's List-style "we need, we have" website was set up to help anyone who needed services, and an online database was constructed to monitor the capacity of hospitals in real time. The Haitian tragedy showed that empathy, charity, and electronic communications are natural allies.
Plugged In -- To What?
For decades a realization has been growing, fed from a variety of sources, that there may be a collective level of intelligence that transcends individual minds. This idea is rooted in antiquity. The Upanishads, India's sacred scriptures that date to the middle of the first millennium BCE, proclaim tat tvam asi, "thou art that": the human and the divine are one. Similarly from the Christian tradition, "The kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:21, KJV). The esoteric sides of all the major religions recognize that the individual consciousness is subsumed and nourished by an infinite, absolute, divine, or cosmic source, and is ultimately one with it -- the scala naturae or the Great Chain of Being. It follows that, at some level, all individual minds are united and one within the boundless All. The goal within the great wisdom traditions is to realize our essential unity with one another, and our inner divinity or cosmic consciousness, and to enable this awareness to make a difference in how we live our life.
For a century we have witnessed a steady outpouring of books that, in one way or another, affirm the recognition that consciousness is larger than the individual mind. Examples include pioneering works such as R. M. Bucke's Cosmic Consciousness, Emerson's essays on the oversoul and transcendentalism, William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience, Arthur Lovejoy's The Great Chain of Being, and C. G. Jung's The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. More recent contributions include Erwin Schrodinger's My View of the World and What Is Mind? and Mind and Matter, Ken Wilbur's The Spectrum of Consciousness, Peter Russell's The Global Brain, Nick Herbert's Elemental Mind, Huston Smith's Beyond the Post-Modern Mind, David Bohm's Wholeness and the Implicate Order, and David Darling's Soul Search.
An overlooked influence in the recognition of collective consciousness is the development within the social sciences of dialogue and group process as ways of promoting consensus, creativity, and problem solving. A variety of terms are being used to describe these exercises -- "developing group synergy," "unleashing collective creativity," and "developing team coordination." Organizations are discovering that when individuals unite in a shared intention, something mysterious happens: a group intelligence emerges that transcends that of the individuals involved, a theme developed by James Surowiecki in his courageous book The Wisdom of Crowds. As psychologist and entrepreneur Carol Frenier says, "In these group experiences, people have access to a kind of knowing that's bigger than what we normally experience with each other. You feel the presence of the sacred, and you sense that everybody else in the group is also feeling that. There's a sense of openness and awareness of something larger than yourself. Your ability to communicate seems broader. What is astounding to people is how much creativity comes forth in a setting like that. You have a sense that the whole group is creating together, and you don't quite exactly know how."
Shinichi Takemura: Designing a Multiperson Planetary Consciousness
Dr. Larry Dossey: Is Technology Proof of Universal Consciousness?
Sheila Lirio Marcelo: Parenting Advice: Screen Time, Our Kids and Child Care
Excellent post. As a parent, I have experienced the swinging reaction to kids and technology. It is easy to have a gut reaction of feeling negatively towards too much social networking, and with it a desire to strongly limit their exposure. However, I also intuit some of what you write here... it seems to be a natural state for this generation to "plug in". Not all of it is good, or positive, but I also see young children being inspired to volunteer like never before. Thanks!
There is NO evidence to support this.
Paradoxically, The Twitcher generation appears to be increasingly more alienated from each other despite the incessant chatter.
part addictive and maybe self indulgent--for four days, and I am alternately elated and annoyed
by what I find. But something on the internet of this magnitude was going to happen sooner or
later, and within its sphere, all of us are suddenly chatting away madly in a carefully articulated
global village of ideas. Here we get the news, and we learn quickly what others say about it,
and the comments seem in general to be of a higher quality than those found, say, in the CNN
comment fields. Maybe. At least a lot of it holds my interest. The structure encourages debate
and may well encourage better thought. I hope so.
But that is not my point. There is a "Gutenberg Galaxy" character in all of this that recasts
public information very dramatically. It brings all of us closer to each other, and that always
works against the abstractions that keep us from feeling when we read of somebody else's calamity.
Empathy has its own perimeter; there is a place where it fails, when the numbers are too many
and the distances are too far. Stalin knew this when he pointed out that it is difficult to feel
sympathy for the victims of what is unimaginable. Here, maybe, is an empathy test of this article's
thesis. We'll see. We can start with the Gulf of Mexico this week.
For example, is there too much internal competition in the workplace? Are decisions and info concentrated on top-down management rather than teams? There are many other behaviors that destroy "trust" and harm group synergy or a productive team culture. Most of us know the concept of "group synergy" but if you want to know more on how it is actually practiced in workplaces and what you can do to achieve more productivity and creativity from your work teams, please include www.tigersamongus.com as one of your references. Free whitepapers are also available to help business owners become better leaders.
Beware the Borg.
/j/k (sort of).
There is a difference between groups of individuals cooperating and group think.
When you reference the Borg, it seems more like you are thinking of group think which can be dangerous.
I guess I meant that groups can be more easily deceived, the members basically following social cues rather than asking questions.
However if the individual is an idiot, then you are correct.
This was an exciting and fascinating article.
I'm sorry to tell you this, but the article you read was either speculation or fraud. Although it's possible you are mis-remembering it.
But there is no basis for any kind of "95%" measurement.
Thank you for the inspirational post. I agree, or "believe" in what you say; your worldview is, in my opinion, a humanist one. I've been of the mindset for the last decade or so that we are in the very early stages of another Humanist era, the last one being the Renaissance.
I wrote an article titled "Renaissance 2.0" that looked at Renaissance Humanism, arguably the most significant product of that era, and the contextual similarities to the era leading up to and in great part bringing about a new but similar mentality so many centuries later. Much of the piece covers the rise of the network and the need for people to feel connected and part of communities again.
I have friends who argue with me when I say things like that. They believe that social life online is causing the worst behavior to flourish and robbing us of our desire and ability to connect in “real” ways (face to face). So, how do you answer or speak to statements like that?
Thanks a lot.
If you are reading this, I would very much like to hear from you how you view some of the critical assessments of your "power of prayer" theories of a decade ago. I remember reading some of those other studies and the conclusions drawn from them. How did you personally challenge those criticisms?
Thanks again,
Eli Davidson
It is the survival of the most apt. And we only exist as a species b/c we learned to help one another.
We survived as a species collectively by working together and helping one another.
We cooperated to fell the mammoth that no one person could do alone.
We cooperated to fend off the attack of a saber tooth tiger that no one person could do alone.
We recognized the value of each member of the group and our inter-dependencies. The child we saved today would help to feed the clan tomorrow. The elder we save today will remember where to find water in tomorrow’s drought.
In the case of humans, the "most apt" survive because they've learned to work together, live in community and help one another.
Occasionally there are aberrations that don't grasp this. They will eventually be weeded out via natural selection as we become a more compassionate and cooperative species.
Technology will help us evolve and build on these strengths.