The sun shone on the Salish Sea this week, the waters around the San Juan Islands barely ruffled by a persistent breeze. Washington state ferries run many times a day between the islands and the mainland, and on beautiful days like the ones we’ve been having, the passenger decks are open at both ends. The air is fresh and cool and exhilarating. It is so lovely to be past the point in recent history where being on any public transportation in the state of Washington—even a ferry—required wearing a mask.
One of the great successes of the Covid propaganda campaign was to compel people that they could signal their fundamental goodness simply by putting on a mask, and that it was acceptable—nay, desirable—to shame anyone who was not in compliance. One day in the Winter of 2021, for instance, I was walking outside on a wide riverside path in Portland, when a masked woman coming the other direction stopped to yell at me. I needed to have some respect, she said, and wear a mask. She was wrong, but that didn’t matter. She felt right.
Effective masks could slow the spread of some respiratory pathogens in an enclosed space. But masking outside never made sense. Being outside made sense, breathing deeply of fresh air made sense, exposing your skin to the sun and the air and to all of what the world had to offer made sense. People didn’t get Covid outside, because airflow disperses the pathogen, and because sunlight is both destructive of viruses and healing of people.
Furthermore, the masks that most people are wearing don’t do any good at all. And they do cause harm. For children in particular, who are developing not just language but social skills, and indeed, learning everything about how to be human, seeing other people’s faces is critical. “Experts” scoffed at the idea that masking children might affect development (as reported by the New York Times, CNN, and National Geographic, to name just a few). Once again, the “experts,” at least the ones trotted out by the media, were wrong1.
In 2023, even the staunchest maskers have mostly stopped wearing masks in places where they do no good at all. Sure enough, on the ferries I was on this week, there were no adults wearing masks.
What I did see, however, was teenagers in masks.
Ten years ago, many of us were sensing the beginnings of a sea change. The so-called digital natives were growing up. But as they matured, moving from high school to college and into the “real world,” one thing they often didn’t leave behind was habits learned on-line.
They posted photos of friends at the beach, at concerts, at parties. They posted photos of themselves getting drunk, getting high, getting off. And the audience, regardless of what was originally intended, was often far larger than a circle of close friends.
Soon enough, a subgenre of self-help pieces emerged, dedicated to showing the young adults how to clean up their social media presence, particularly as they prepared to apply for college, and for jobs. Publications from Teen Vogue to Norton got in on the game.
But mostly the behavior continued. Over-sharing became a trait of a whole generation, a trait they may have known they were kind of supposed to be ashamed of, but of which many of them seemed to be proud. This was the end of privacy.
Privacy is necessary for more reasons than I will elucidate here, but one is this: Privacy gives you time. It allows for reflection and introspection before coming to a decision about what an event meant to you. You observe, you experience, maybe even you interact, but your reaction is your own. You do not have to share your reaction right away—or ever. Your emotions may overwhelm you at first—perhaps you feel terrified, or amused, of full of joy—but wait a little, alone with your thoughts, and recognize that your fear was an overreaction, your laughter a stand-in for discomfort, and your jubilation was about being part of a group you had long wanted to join, but now that you think on it, maybe they aren’t that great after all. If you’ve already posted your instantaneous reactions, though, and the entire world has access to them, it can be hard to reassess. You have become your instantaneous reactions. How can you change your mind now? You become calcified.
The youngest among those who made a lifestyle of oversharing on-line are now clinging to masks. They are see-sawing from one inhumanity to another.
Imagine:
Five years ago I was just starting high school, and sharing everything, absolutely everything, on Snapchat. Two years ago, as pandemonium raged, I tried to break-out on TikTok. I failed. I shared and shared, curated and filtered and shared some more. It left me empty. Now, I hide. I am faceless and anonymous. You cannot see me. You cannot know me. When we meet in the real world, your eyes shall find no place to land when they look at me, for there is nothing to see. When next we meet, you will not know that we have met before. I disappear into a sea of bland faces, incomplete faces.
I yearn to find myself, to make something of myself, to discover of what I am capable. Or, I used to. Perhaps the problem was over-exposure. And so I try to claw back my privacy. And so I fail.
“we found that face masks had a significantly negative impact on children’s speech recognition.” – from Kwon and Yang 2023. Effects of face masks and acoustical environments on speech recognition by preschool children in an auralised classroom. Applied Acoustics, 202: 109149.
In suburban Minneapolis, I see more elderly people clinging to masks. However, a few days ago, I saw a mom and two young kids all masked up in a store. One of her daughters was wearing a shirt that said, "I believe in science." They were young enough not to be choosing and purchasing their own clothes. I was so sad for those kids.
Beautifully put, and heartbreaking. I’m so glad that I was able to grow up in relative privacy, in an age before social media. I had the glorious luxury of being forgotten. There is such value in being able to evolve our character over time and shed the mistakes and embarrassment we bumble into in our youth (or adulthood!) This comes to mind often as I raise my three children. Hopefully I can help guide them through this modern over-sharing world. Thank you for sharing your insights Heather!