Toxic Accessibility Culture

While I believe that the social media age has brought a lot of advantages to the current generations; like having a whole library at your fingertips, or social media apps that can actually be a lot of fun, and not to mention condensing down the gadgets you used to have to carry around all at once (like a camera, walk-man, and a cell phone). I also think that it has brought on one of the worst subcultures for people to become accustomed to; and that is accessibility. Toxic Accessibility Culture is something I’ve chalked up to as the expectation that we are available 24/7 due to our smart devices. People want to have access to us all the time now, whether it be family and friends, or co-workers and bosses, significant others, whatever it be, we’ve come to normalize this idea that everyone needs to be attentive all the time, and drop whatever they’re doing so they can respond to your text.

Let’s say we go back in time to about 15 years ago. It’s 2005, cell phones are popular, but they’re not advanced; we can’t scroll through countless social media apps, shoot off rapid texts, or FaceTime. I think maybe there was the option to have one or two numbers on speed dial and that was mind-blowing. People would leave messages on answering machines at homes, and emails were answered when there was a computer available. In my experience, nobody was spam calling another line leaving countless voicemails on my family’s answering machine asking why I wasn’t answering, where I was, or who I was with, and when I would call them back. One message would suffice, and they’d just have to tough it up and wait for a response. This isn’t to say I think cellphones should still be like this, I myself am guilty of constantly getting the newest iPhone. It’s fantastic that I can share photos on Instagram with my family members in Indiana, or to FaceTime my brother who lives in British Columbia now, or even to just text my friends and know when they got the messages due to the read receipt feature.

At the same time, I could probably write a novel about how many arguments I’ve been in or heard about that all started with miscommunication and ignored text messages. I’ve been in the middle of situations where I don’t answer all my texts right away and have friends either become angry with me or assume that I was upset with them; in reality it was more likely that I was sleeping or doing an activity without my phone. The idea that we constantly need to have our phones conjoined to our limbs is unrealistic and frustrating, and for me, anxiety-inducing. Getting a confrontational text I don’t want to read leads me to sit and try to conjure up an appropriate response which always has me second-guessing myself. Not only just text messages, but we also have things like “Find My Phone” and the Snap Map that allow you to share your location with friends; This for me is a really uncomfortable idea. It’s not that I have things to hide about what I’m doing during my day, but when I get text messages asking me what I’m doing at a certain location I start to get a little paranoid. I had one instance where I was at my job, and the SnapMap located me at the park across from my place of employment; this led to a friend asking me why I had lied to her about what I was doing, and then got mad that I didn’t respond to her cause my phone wasn’t on my person. I promptly turned off my Bitmoji after that and even considered deleting Snapchat all together. 

It’s not just friends that demand you be available 24/7 either, but employers too. I’ve been in situations where my boss has called me multiple times outside of work hours and gets frustrated when I don’t answer—even when I’m not obligated to. My dad has left family dinners and woken up in the middle of the night to answer his own boss. I’ve sat at the kitchen table and watched my mom take on HR matters outside of her office and try to appease employees even when she wasn’t getting paid for it. In Germany, they actually made it a law in 2013 that employers weren’t allowed to contact their employees outside of paid hours to prevent the burn out of employees. I’d advocate for every country to pass that law.  

Don’t get me wrong though, accessibility isn’t always negative! It’s great to be able to connect with people anywhere in the world. It’s a lot easier to send out texts while you’re commuting (as long as it’s not you behind the wheel, of course) or waiting for class to start. Having the resource to answer voicemails, emails, or to surf social media all in the palm of your hand is way better than waiting to find a place with WiFi where you can use your laptop. However, I don’t think that should mean we have to assume that because we have this advantage that everyone is always using technology constantly. We shouldn’t get mad when we send a text and it gets answered a few hours later. Or have to spam call someone until they finally pick up. Learn to be comfortable with the fact that not everything and everyone is there to make your life more convenient. It’s great if there is someone in your life who always gets back to you right away, but you should never assume that’s a given. For me, I found it’s really useful to forget that I’ve sent something once I do. Like for example, I have a question about a paper that’s due in one of my classes, so I send an email to my professor, and then I leave it. I click out of my email and find something else to do (like maybe respond to a text). We have devices that notify us immediately when we get emails, texts, or calls for the exact reason that we don’t have to wait around for it. Basically, we need to learn around that people CAN be accessible whenever, but that doesn’t mean that they always are and we should throw away this concept that people are lying, being shady, or ignoring you when they are inaccessible. 

Essentially, what I’m trying to get at is that cell phones are great, I’m nowhere near ready to live without one. But (and feel free to call my old fashioned) I am ready to set it down more often and look at life through my own eyes instead of through the screen of an iPhone. I think it’s important that everyone take a step back and think about the impact that Toxic Accessibility Culture has made on them. Maybe you’re lucky and it hasn’t affected you at all, and to that I wholeheartedly say congratulations. But maybe you’re the type of person who freaks out when your significant other or best friend doesn’t answer your text in two seconds flat. Or you could be in between those two types of people. Wherever you stand on the issue, take some time to reflect, maybe even discuss it with the people in your life, and join me in trying to take the toxicity out of Accessibility Culture.

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