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dc.contributor.advisorRonci, Rayeng
dc.contributor.authorSpindler, Maryeng
dc.date.issued2019eng
dc.date.submitted2019eng
dc.description.abstract"I saw the symptoms first. It was the way music had become about hopelessness, drugs, sex, and disturbing emptiness. It was how platonic in-person conversation felt. It was in every addicted person around me. It was in the juul, and in Adderall and Xanax. It was in dab pens that offered an on-the-go high at a 90% THC concentrated wax. It was the girl on campus who always ate Cheetos before her meal at the dining hall, so that when she puked up her food later, she would know she got it all out the moment her vomit turned orange. It was in the unexplainable tears, and in the anorexic bodies around me. It was in the video game addictions and the porn addictions. It was in the mass shootings, the politicians lie, the opioid crisis, the hook-up culture, and on reality tv. It was the symptoms of a society lost, of an impulsive, sensitive, and egotistical culture - and a generation that's beginning to feel the impact of losing touch with the very things that make us human. As I observed myself, my friends, and the culture we were living in, I saw the world changing around me. Born on the cusp of the digital revolution, I experienced a childhood without constant technology, and a pubescent adolescence learning how to navigate an iPhone and newly emerged social media. It took me a few years of desperately searching for an explanation, and months of research to understand the symptoms that I saw and that I personally felt from this digital world. I needed to know which commandments of the human experience we broke that are making us all so sad, so empty, and so anxious. Understanding and identifying the problem was the first step in curing them, and in this thesis, I want to relay the information that helped me heal to others – in hopes that facing the reality of our culture and its impact on the individual may help them heal as well. The symptoms I want to focus on specifically are the mental health crisis and the deterioration of human connection. These are only two symptoms among many, but I’ve come to realize that these two are at the core of much of everything else we suffer from. Addiction rises at the hand of loneliness and depression. The Juul addictions, the eating disorders, the hookup culture, the Adderall and Xanax abuse, all of it seems to be coping habits derived from the two larger symptoms we endure."--From page 1-2.eng
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10355/68543
dc.languageEnglisheng
dc.publisherUniversity of Missouri, College of Arts and Scienceseng
dc.relation.ispartofcommunityUniversity of Missouri--Columbia. College of Arts and Sciences. Department of Englisheng
dc.rightsOpenAccess.eng
dc.rights.licenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.
dc.subjectdigital; disconnectedeng
dc.titleDepressed and disconnected : the symptoms of a digital age in Americaeng
dc.typeThesis (Undergraduate)eng
thesis.degree.grantorUniversity of Missouri--Columbiaeng
thesis.degree.levelBachelorseng
thesis.degree.nameB.A.eng


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