Beware the worship of convenience

Ever smarter apps risk turning young people – in China and the UK – into digital recluses

If you’ve been to a Chinese city in the last five years, you will know about the proliferation of mobile payments. I’m not just talking about the use of QR codes to order food and pay for shopping, which has been around for at least a decade now. I’m talking about how, after the pandemic, it seems that every single aspect of city life must be conducted by app.

Buy a ticket for a tourist site? Register via WeChat please. Order a coffee at Luckin’ or Starbucks? Scan the QR code please. Going to see a stand-up comedy show? Sign up via Meituan please.

All of these are real examples from my most recent trip to China, last month. For those plugged into and literate on the Chinese digital ecosystem, this makes life incredibly convenient (I was annoyed at myself for only belatedly realising that Alipay had a travel QR code that adapted to each city you were in, so that you could take public transport everywhere relatively seamlessly).

But since the pandemic, it seems to me that these digital transactions aren’t just supplementing everyday processes – but replacing them. Instead of speaking to a barista about my coffee order, she directs me back to my phone where I can order via a code and, five minutes later, a coffee appears on the counter. I can see her behind the counter, but she is not there for me to interact with.

Great, I get my coffee quickly and she can continue to work efficiently, but what about that human interaction? With digitisation spurred by the pandemic, you could probably go quite a long time in a Chinese city these days without actually speaking to a stranger. That is not only exclusionary to those who are not literate in this digital world, but also takes away the everyday, human interactions that are, I think, crucially important for our sense of self, of the collective, and of groundedness.

This aspect of China’s digitisation has been on my mind recently because I’ve been writing a column on the disconnectedness of millennials and Gen-Z in the West. I write:

We don’t, generally, go to church. Our jobs take us across the country or even the world, living in busy urban centres where we become anonymous, transient renters. We are more connected than ever by technology and yet technology has also made us into hermits, afraid of face-to-face conversations. Our horizons may be bigger than those of previous generations but our connections — to the community and to each other — are probably much shallower.

I was inspired (or, ahem, triggered) to write this piece after an absolutely atrocious carol service I went to in northeast London recently. It was guitar riffs and confetti, but no actual feeling of coming together with a congregation. It got me thinking about how little opportunity people like me and my friends – city-dwelling professionals in our 20s and 30s – have for connection with the local community. It’s not really a piece about China, but I hope you find it interesting nevertheless.

Of course, in China, there is a different set of dynamics to the UK: young people, on the whole, are likely to feel a part of a collective much more than the average British young person. Family connections are generally stronger, especially with extended family and certainly with grandparents, if they are still alive. National identity is also stronger, with many feeling pride in being Chinese in a way that many young Brits don’t really feel anything about being British.

But there are similarities in how digitisation has removed each level of face-to-face contact. Ever smarter apps offer more and more convenience to the user, removing that unpredictable layer of human contact. In the West, that has made young people into digital recluses – I have friends who are afraid to pick up phone calls, or would rather Google directions for ages than ask a stranger for directions. I don’t know to what extent that happens in China – I’ve been out of the country for too long – but I can see that the apps are even more advanced, and daily life can be even more cloistered.

So the column is really just a reminder that convenience afforded by tech may be good and irresistibly pleasant, but let’s not lose sight of the human interactions that we all need to feel grounded to our locale, our neighbourhood. That, I think, is a lesson that applies to the UK and to China.

As I write in my column’s conclusion:

So, scary as it is, I’m resolving to try harder next year. It’d be nice to learn the postman’s name, to befriend shopkeepers and baristas, maybe join a local gardening club. Though I won’t be putting my hopes in that particular carol service ever again.

I’m hoping that’s a relatively optimistic note to end the year on. Wishing you all a happy Christmas!