The Patriot Post® · Selfie Society

In a Sunday column, Dr. Keith Ablow sounded the alarm about a Twitter feed, @LI PartyStories, where teenage kids posted explicit photos of themselves touching each other intimately, urinating on houseplants, lying dead drunk on a stairway, and several other “noble” pursuits. The account has since been suspended, a development that will no doubt elicit severe disappointment – among its more than 22,000 followers.

“It is no longer news that narcissism stoked by the Internet can dissolve anything left of the modesty of American teenagers, who already fancy themselves worthy of posting hundreds or thousands of photographs of themselves on Facebook and having their egos pumped up by equally deluded ‘followers’ on Twitter,” writes Ablow, who suggests how parents should respond. "Confiscate their phones, shut down their Twitter and Facebook accounts and test them randomly for drugs and alcohol every two or three weeks for the next year,“ he suggests. "Each positive test should result in being grounded for a month. And every one of the teenagers directly involved should be in psychotherapy.”

Probably not bad advice, but there is one major problem with applying it. Parents would have to tear themselves away from their own phones, and Twitter and Facebook accounts, as well as drugs and alcohol, long enough to pay attention to what their children are doing.

Fat chance.

For better or worse, and I say much worse, we live in an age where technology, and the concomitant destruction of privacy that accompanies it, is now the norm.

No doubt the good doctor earnestly believes the teens he describes as “emotionally disordered – probably suffering with one or more symptoms of a brewing personality disorder,” are exactly that. But what happens when such so-called personality disorders are not just recognized, but embraced by the vast majority? And not just teenagers, but everybody?

In other words, when does mass psychosis mutate into socially acceptable behavior?

I remember writing a column for the New York Post seven or eight years ago about the general rise of inconsiderate and rude behavior that accompanied cell phone usage. I got a huge response from people who were as annoyed as I was. Today, I’d bet my life that at least half of those who responded are too engrossed with their Twitter accounts Facebook pages, i-Phones, and i-Pads to even notice, much less care anymore.

How engrossed? Here’s a story about a man who was killed last June when he jumped onto train tracks to retrieve a dropped cell phone. Ditto for a guy who plunged into the ice-covered Chicago River two months ago. How about a woman who fell onto the tracks in front of an oncoming subway train because she was entraced by her phone, or another who stepped into the path of an oncoming truck and was killed for the same reason?

And let’s not forget texting and driving. Even a cursory search regarding this phenomenon reveals a swath of death and destruction so widespread, it required the enactment of laws against doing it. As far as I’m concerned, that’s like having to enact laws forbidding people to put their hands on a lit stove burner.

Yet again, if more and more people are engaged in irredeemably stupid behavior, when does stupid become acceptable?

Ablow believes we are in the midst of "a worsening epidemic of psychological illness – with elements of narcissism, substance abuse and disinhibition – fueled by the likes of Twitter and Facebook.“ I believe the doctor is half right. While the likes of Twitter and Facebook might have provided the initial impetus for the voluntary relinquishment of personal privacy and inhibition, what are we supposed to make of the vast spying capabilities of the NSA? Or the vast array of cameras that cover more and more of the public square?

How about "Stingray” the latest technology employed by police departments to intercept phone calls and texts by “tricking” your cell phone into identifying itself and transmitting its data to police instead of the nearest cell tower? What about Google glass? That company is pushing a campaign to make the privacy-busting eyewear more acceptable, even as they’re currently promising not to release facial recognition Glassware until they address the issues associated with it. What about the reality that the federal government's Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) wants to collect data about what Americans eat and send obese people text messages about their eating habits?

Drones anyone? In 2013, the Federal Aviation Administration had already granted 327 licenses for domestic use, and it projected as many as 10,000 licensed systems by 2017. What’s the likelihood it will stop there, given the urges of  those who believe their need to know trumps all, from police departments to the EPA?

I could go on – and on, and on, and on – but I’m guessing you get the picture. With all due respect to Dr. Ablow, it may very well be that what he deems abnormal behavior is in fact an unconscious and possibly healthy manifestation of the realization that virtually every facet of one’s life can be monitored, digitized, categorized and stored. Moreover, the fact that Ablow focuses on teenagers is itself revealing. Dr. Ablow is 52 years old. That means he lived in an era prior to the advancement of privacy-wrecking technology. When one straddles the digital divide as it were, no doubt the behavior he describes undoubtedly seems abnormal, because there is another context from which to judge it.

What about 20 or 30 years from now, when the vast majority of Americans will have never known what it’s like to live in a world where they aren’t under constant surveillance?

We already know the trend line. A 2011 research study entitled “the world UNPLUGGED” revealed that a "clear majority" of almost 1,000 university students, interviewed at 12 campuses in 10 countries, including Britain, America and China, were incapable of voluntarily giving up their technological crutches for even a single day. Students who kept a diary of their emotional reactions all described them in remarkably similar terms: “fretful, confused, anxious, irritable, insecure, nervous, restless, crazy, addicted, panicked, jealous, angry, lonely, dependent, depressed, jittery and paranoid.”

Any guesses what 48 hours of weening would have produced?

“School administrators should suspend each and every one of [the teenagers involved with @LI Party Stories] from school for two weeks and admit them back to school only with a note from a psychologist or psychiatrist or licensed social worker stating that the student has begun treatment,” Ablow suggests.

Again I have no doubt the doctor’s heart is in the right place, but it requires a certain level of faith that to believe that psychologists, psychiatrists or licensed social workers treating these children don’t suffer from the same symptoms. Furthermore, there is great irony associated with the reality that all files associated with that treatment must be converted into electronic records by 2015 – records that will become part of the federal government’s national electronic database.

In 1949, when George Orwell’s “1984” was published, he envisioned a dystopian society of total surveillance under the auspices of a totalitarian government. “Dystopian” is the critical term here, because it suggests that most people would consider such a society abnormal. Is that still the case? Perhaps it is, for now.

But nothing makes the transition from a democratic republic to a totalitarian hellhole easier than ever-increasing numbers of Americans growing used to–and comfortable with – the idea that privacy is an anachronism. And once privacy goes, is there any doubt that modesty and inhibition are the next casualties?

Sorry Dr. Ablow. The “Selfie Society” is already well upon us.

© 2014 The Patriot Post