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It seems obvious. As do other animals, we mate, rear offspring, have families, gather in groups, hunt, communicate, etc. together. We are social animals. But today it would appear that our technological culture seems to present special challenges to our social lives. Consider some of our present circumstances. 

We have reduced need to communicate socially. Rather than meet face to face, we exchange information by sending messages. Many live face-to-face with iPods and iPads rather than talking to or listening face-to-face with other people. For hours and hours we watch people on screens rather than personally interacting. Children used to run around neighborhoods playing with each other.  Now a lot of that time is given over to video games and watching television.  Pictures on screens. Not actions with people.

Watching a screen, big or small, rather than interacting with the surrounding world for two to four hours a day is not social activity, but it is bound to have some social as well as psychological effect. No need to learn social behavior. No need for civility when you are dealing with a machine. The mind is further affected by these modern habits. There is a difference between reading a book and seeing the same story on a screen. Reading a book means you have to imagine that world. Watching a screen does not use imagination. 

Related to how we learn is what we learn. Consider the screen world a modern child learns about.  Consider the world earlier generations learned about through playing in the back yard.  Did any Whisper reader when in elementary school need to ask parents to explain “porn queen” or “Manhattan madam?” Think of what a modern child may view on YouTube and television! 

We are as we perceive, and we perceive differently today than yesterday. The world that Aristotle grew up in is very different from the world today, inside and out. The ‘social animal’ is changing.