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Calvin Leather
Dr. James Clements
WRIT 150
14 October 2014
Solitude and Exposure in Digital Media
Privacy encompasses not only the ability to control who hears what we say, but
also the ability to remove ourselves from the influence of others and to be alone. While
this seclusion might primarily be thought of in the physical sense, it can also involve
being away from the information broadcasted by others. This separation might be desired
if the information is unsolicited, unnecessarily repetitive, or disturbing. Historically, this
informational privacy was linked with its physical counterpart. If you desired a temporary
reprieve from someones ideas, you could simply leave their presence. We were able to
switch between states of exposure to the outside world and states of calm and solitude.
Now, however, we are constantly presented with information through social media and
online news outlets with relatively little control over what we see. Problematically,
societys view that we should avoid solitude and instead frequently expose ourselves to
information about world events has remained unchanged, despite the advent of these new
technologies.
While there are many instances in which it is good to know about what is
happening around us, much of the information we are subjected to each day is not useful,
as it does not directly impact us. Consider what you have learned about in past weeks
through the internet. A fair deal of what you read probably involved some celebrity
mishap, local news or interest stories. Perhaps you also have been exposed to more

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troublesome information about civil wars, drug violence, or natural disasters. It would be
difficult to argue that this information is useful, as very few of us are in a position to
affect significant change on these serious global conflicts. While some level of exposure
to violence might be beneficial to a society so as to prevent complete denial of death and
tragedy, the constant influx of this sort of news is harmful to our psychological
wellbeing.
Humans are particularly vulnerable to the sort of vicarious trauma that such
frequent exposure to violence brings. We are, as Janna Malamud Smith states in her book
Private Matters, permeable membranes, intimately coupled in our emotions with the
happenings around us (37). We see the suffering of another and are invaded by the
emotion. This empathy normally benefits us, as it allows us to discern and react correctly
to the emotions of those around us. Now, however, it as though we are often surrounded
by crowds of the sick and injured. Hearing about these global tragedies wears on us, as
we are not able to extend our empathy to the vast number of individuals we read or hear
about. We lack what Smith argues to be the basest form of privacy- solitude. We are
constantly linked into to some form of social media or online news, and as such are never
alone. This time of separation that we lack is necessary, as Smith suggests, because we
require time in private to sort through and process the experiences we have had. This
processing might be a simple calming of emotion over time, or might involve a more
intellectual process like considering alternate viewpoints. Ultimately these strategies
bring a reduction of the stress caused by a certain remembered experience.
Smith misses the possibility, however, that the frequency of troublesome
experiences we witness is something that we, as a species, have not developed the

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capacity to handle. Until recently, the average human might have witnessed the passing
of a friend, the violent death of a stranger, and perhaps the descent of a family member
into the grasp of disease. We have developed to handle this level of trauma, even then
with significant difficulty and requiring long periods of privacy to process our thoughts.
To be subjected to the death of thousands each day, even through the separated medium
of the internet, however, requires even more than the processing Smith discusses that
comes with short times of solitude.
It seems strange, then, that despite the ways in which learning of violent incidents
damage us, we have designed our technologies and respective usage habits so that
solitude is not truly possible. Our platforms still reflect the views on privacy that we held
when print media was our primary source of information. Under such circumstances,
voluntary solitude from the news was not necessary, as intake was limited simply by the
constraints of only getting a newspaper once or twice a week. We also likely received the
newspaper from a local source and so the stories were more geographically limited in
their scope. We were not exposed to as much tragedy simply because of the type and
extent of the information we received. If this no longer is the case, why are we so
reluctant to let go of the belief that continual exposure to international events is
important?
One reason is that we desire to expose ourselves to far away events because the
thought of something terrible happening outside of our knowledge is threatening. It is so
worrisome that we do it despite the stress is causes. If something dangerous is occurring
elsewhere, the thought of not knowing about it means that, despite the fact that it may not
pose a risk to us in the present moment or in the future, it could intensify and we might

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learn about it too late. We therefore want to know about everything that is happening
around us. This is perhaps a remnant of a world in which we needed to remain constantly
vigilant, when predation was actually a significant concern. Now, though the instinct
remains, in the relatively stable Western world, such threats do not truly exist. Our gaze
then turns increasingly outwards, looking for the next threat, even if one is not truly
present.
Fantasies of control also play a part in our avoidance of solitude. We might wish
to believe that our foreknowledge of a faraway event that comes to impact us will give us
some power over the outcome. We may even hypothesize about how the problem may be
solved, our own speculations making feel as though we are knowledgeable about the
world and able to solve problems. In reality though, many of these faraway events will
never directly affect us, and even if they do, the foreknowledge would not actually have
prepared us. It is doubtful that many Americans have made concrete preparations to
protect themselves in the case that any of the current international conflicts intensify.
This is because we have rationally decided that such issues will not directly impact us.
If we can acknowledge this, and yet still continue to follow such stories, we are
propelled not by logical judgment but by fear. Being relatively unable to separate
ourselves from the world is causing us psychological harm, and so it seems like we
should try to follow our rational beliefs and be able to control our access to the news.
How do we give ourselves this ability of separation?
One of the more extreme possibilities would be to leave social media or internet
news altogether. Clearly, this is not practical. We depend on these platforms for actual
relevant information- issues that we will be voting upon, or happenings local enough in

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their scope that we are able to directly change them. Platforms such as Facebook are also
integral components of our professional and social lives. Furthermore, complete
separation from the outside world serves only to give us a distorted view of reality. We
need some degree of exposure, but also the ability to retract into privacy.
Then could making moderate changes to our information technologies assist us in
gaining control? Programs used by platforms such as Google and Amazon to predict the
desires of a user could be adapted to restrict the content of articles found on news
websites. Facebook could allow us to rate articles and links posted by our friends as
troublesome, and use this information to prevent similar articles from being presented to
us. Indeed, such a system is already used by Facebook to tailor advertisements to specific
users. Content filters operating on our computer could perform such services across all of
the websites that we visit. In all likelihood, however, most users would disable such
features because of the overriding vigilance that propels us out of privacy. If such
strategies were possible, they likely would already have been widely introduced.
Clearly then, our technologies are not the root of the issue. Rather, it is our own
habits that are to blame. We must, as a society, shift our beliefs and accept that constant
exposure to information does not actually make us safer. If we come to this
understanding, we gain control over our usage habits- we can, at time, expose ourselves
to the world to achieve what we need, but also know when we should disengage. This is a
hard change to make, as we are going against our instinctual behaviors. Doing so,
however, will give us not only freedom from the stress that our hypervigilance brings, but
also the ability to voluntarily remove ourselves from the internet and better enjoy our
lives.

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Works Cited
Malamud Smith, Janna. Private Matters: In Defense of the Personal Life. New York:
Addison Wesley, 1997. Print.