Navigating Digital Mourning: When the Offline and Online Worlds Collide

At the age of 8, the author had her first encounter with the online world. Now as an adult, she reflects on the impact it had on her.

Sitting in a circle atop a mountain in the Pacific Ocean, surrounded by nature’s beauty, a man of chief descent serenades us with a ukulele. As we partake in a ceremony to process our grief, I realize that my generation grew up on the internet, mourning what it took from us.

I belong to a generation that straddles the line between life before and after the internet. I vividly remember the moment when it entered my life. Goggles on my head, on the way to swim class, I saw my mother in the home office sitting in front of the massive PC. She suggested teaching me how to use the internet by navigating to “disney.com” to play games. Initially, it felt like just another way to pass the time, a flat and sterile world compared to the richness of reality.

By the age of 12, I was hooked on Facebook, spending more time scrolling than swimming. The allure of online connection was undeniable, but it also created a disconnect from our true selves. As babies were born into a digital world, my generation lost something essential from our childhoods – a direct experience of life untarnished by screens and algorithms.

On the mountain, surrounded by friends, I pondered the implications of our digital age. Below us, Mark Zuckerberg had purchased acres of land on the island. A friend, a musician with deep roots in the land, faced eviction as foreign buyers sought to turn ancestral taro patches into holiday homes.

This separation from ourselves in the digital realm is just one aspect of a long history of disconnects that serve capitalist interests. From Descartes’ mind-body split to the enclosure of community lands, each separation has paved the way for exploitative practices that now threaten our very existence. Climate crisis forces us to confront these separations and re-establish connections with each other and the earth.

As we face the challenges of climate change and the omnipresence of social media, we are presented with a unique opportunity to embrace vulnerability and deepen our connections. Like sitting in a circle on a Hawaiian mountain, sharing our grief and resilience, we must confront our newest separation – from ourselves as authentic beings, not just data points in a virtual world.