Assignment illustrates our disconnection to others

    Recently, I assigned my students a project in which they had to create a persuasive video argument that would take a certain position on an issue they cared about. Not only would they have to inform their audience about their issue and explain why they are arguing for a certain side, but they had to persuade their audience – a class of 20 college students – that their issue and position were important and mattered.
    Of course, there was fear and anxiety. Why, in a composition class, would I be asking them to create a video? How would they be able to complete the assignment?             
    But after consoling them and encouraging them that they could, in fact, compose a video on a topic that they had been researching since the beginning of the semester, they came to an important realization: it was a fun and creative assignment.             
    Moreover, as we watched the completed videos in class, they began to realize that, despite their many individual differences, their collected videos had come together in a number of important ways. By looking at these videos as a whole, I realized that my class had hit on one of the major concerns of our generation: the disconnection that social media has created in terms of person-to-person contact.
    In John Donne’s meditations, he famously asserts, “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” (Meditation XVII)
    In this line, we see that man was not created for isolation. Rather mankind is interconnected, part of a whole.     
    We see God’s dissatisfaction in his creation of Adam as a solitary being in the creation stories. In Genesis, God says, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” (2:18)
    Creating woman out of man’s rib, we can see where Donne derives his idea of interconnection between individuals: we are parts of one another, created in God’s image and likeness.
    While none of my students have focused on the divinity of creation and the implications of not being isolated creatures, most of them have chosen to discuss the creation of a divide between people. In some cases, my students discussed the generation gap that is occurring because of technology; in others, students argued that social media is bring about antisocial behavior and narcissistic or egotistical attitudes in its users. Whatever their individual concerns were, all of them were pointing to the same problem: the isolation and disconnection that is occurring among members of society, whether in the same age-groups or between generations (as in, parent and child).
    Very often, I hear complaints about how young adults are unaware or careless of the disconnectedness of their generation. We see spoofs of a person’s inability to leave home without their cell phone. We hear of fights between parents and their children about the appropriate age to begin using social media. Too often, we hear grandparents talk about communal feeling and their desire to communicate with their neighbors. Today, however, we rarely take time to talk to people outside of our social circle. Constantly rushed, we return home and enclose ourselves in our domiciles, in our own little world, to stay concerned with our own problems. And, while, oftentimes, these characterizations are true, there is another side. There is another voice that needs to be heard.
    As I proudly watched my students’ completed productions, I realized that they are aware of these problems. But not only are they aware, they are also intent on actively seeking change. Of course, these solutions won’t be enacted overnight. But there are bridges that can be made, and hope in the future.
    Heather Bozant-Witcher can be reached at [email protected]