The Unconsidered Dangers of Today's "Social Distancing" Practices - Nick Hwang

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No, I am not here to talk about the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, or other names to call the virus. I will also refrain from talking about how much I am dreading social distancing and how I want to go back to school - that topic is getting too old and repetitive. Today, I will expose those who will read this to an overlooked part of social distancing, something that may be a little far fetched, but diabolical and insidious.

It was during a morning walk that it first came to my mind. It was almost like a science fiction movie, or something that I had thought of as unrealistic or impossible as a kid - going to school online, and doing everything through computers. The problem was, our online schooling is like a science-fiction movie, way too futuristic for me to believe this was a reality. Then I began to think deeper, is our situation acting as a kickstart to universal online schooling? This thought was very scary to me because eventually, social distancing may become a normality, which may cause our youth to lose social skills. 

This concept of lost social skills caused me to think even more, if humans are not interacting with other humans, then who are they interacting with? Then it came to me. Robots. Oh no, not the robots! What if our social distancing practices lead to the creation of ROBOTS? The creation or robots would deteriorate humans’ social skills, but more significantly, it could potentially be detrimental to the lives of all humans. In most movies that are based on robots, artificial intelligence (AI) realizes that it is better than humans and robots attempt to take over the world. However, there is not much we can do to prevent these advances in technology, or the inevitable propagation of online schooling, so I will say it - we are doomed!

Comments

  1. DanielleApril 30, 2020 at 11:00 AM

    This is a scary thought and I don't think we will exclusively go to online schooling, but I do think it's a possibility that we will do more from home if needed or on snow days, etc. One thing we are learning now is that we really do need the social interaction that school and work provides !

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