How Technology Makes You Socially Awkward
The Body Remembers Everything
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Do you struggle to make eye contact with others? Do you feel self-conscious about your body language when around others? Do your body movements feel awkward when you’re out with others?
Some of you have no idea what I’m talking about. Some of you know exactly what I’m talking about.
Can you imagine that our ancestors, who spent their days roaming around the African Savannah, hunting animals, sitting around the campfire every evening and talking with their tribe, were ever socially awkward?
Social awkwardness is a product of modernity and technology. And I’m about to explain why. But first, we need to understand how the body adapts to its environment.
The body adapts to its environment — down to the cellular level
The truth is, in the very deepest sense, you become what you habitually do. On the cellular, microscopic level, your body adapts to what you do on a daily basis. Your body has a memory, and will grow in a way that suits the environment you put it in. After all, Human beings have a high degree of phenotypic plasticity.
Adaptations occur in your cardiovascular system, muscles, hormones, and even, over a longer period of time, your skeletal structure. Many of these adaptations can be positive.
Positive Adaptations
The human body is incredible.
When human beings live at high altitudes, like the Sherpas who live in the mountains of Nepal, the lungs become bigger in response to an environment with less oxygen available.
When you learn the guitar, overtime your fingertips develop thick skin; your skin adapts in order to help you press down the metal guitar strings.
Your brain is neuroplastic, and continually makes new neural pathways to make you better and more efficient at what you practise. If you study Spanish consistently for 3 years, the neural pathways in the language centre of the brain will become stronger, eventually allowing you to communicate in an entirely different language.
