As Life Returns to Normal, a Great Offlining May Begin - The Atlantic

My most intimate relationship of 2020 was with the internet. I did my job online, and talked to my friends online, and streamed hundreds of hours of TV that I’d already seen online, just to fill my empty apartment with human sounds. I used the internet to put scary Instagram filters on my face, and join a mutual-aid Slack group, and reflexively refresh the coronavirus case count in my zip code, and attend my cousin’s wedding, and blog about a parasocial relationship with an online Pilates instructor.

I know I’m not alone in feeling that the internet has become even more vital than it was before the pandemic began, when it was already pretty vital. Adults talked, last year, about discovering TikTok for the first time, and using it to soothe the anxieties instigated by everything else. They also Zoomed and Zoomed and Zoomed, and then discussed “Zoom fatigue,” or “video vertigo,” defined as “a downward spiral that comes from compounding work and leisure in the same space.” Most of the important dating apps added videochat features, or other tools for virtual dating, and celebrated unexpected surges in flirting: March 29, 2020, was Tinder’s first day of 3 billion swipes, setting a record that would be broken 130 more times within the year. Clubhouse, an invite-only app for “social audio,” blew up and inspired Facebook and Twitter to make copycat features; the game-streaming app Twitch and the game-chatter app Discord had huge years too. Netflix got even bigger, food-ordering apps became even more popular, and Uber bought an alcohol-delivery start-up for $1.1 billion. This was the year that the internet saved us from despair, gave us purpose, colonized every open space in our lives, and led us into Facebook groups that destroyed our minds.

Now, as the stress of the pandemic is beginning to recede, our relationship with the internet might be renegotiated. President Joe Biden has promised to deliver so much progress against the coronavirus that by July 4, “Americans will have taken a serious step toward a return to normal.” The word normal seems to describe parties and sporting events and cross-generational hugs—but a step toward these implies a step away from where we’ve lived since last year’s awful spring. Airline travel is already coming back; could airplane mode be next? As vaccination rates tick up, and IRL social life resumes, it’s getting easier to imagine that we’re on the brink of something big: a coordinated withdrawal from swiping and streaming, a new consensus that staying home to watch Netflix is no longer a chill Friday-night plan, but an affront.

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