By Michael Grey*
It was in the 1950s, during an earlier Middle East crisis, that the wife of a British Prime Minister complained that the Suez Canal was flowing through her sitting room. Today, of course, we have a different watercourse dominating the news and it is difficult to consider anything else. Nevertheless, we must persist. Before the Trumpian Armada got into its stride, there had been a great deal of public agonising about the effect of endless connectivity on young minds, with the Australian government taking the nuclear option to ban social media for under-16 year-olds.
The jury is still out on this bold step, but other concerned interests are considering the same. You do not have to be a dinosaur to be worried about the attention with which the population is glued to its devices, regardless of their generation. When did you last see anyone in a train reading a real book, or a newspaper? Our grandchildren are glued to their phones, not that their parents provide a better example, as we read about first-grade children unable to speak, or baffled by the need to turn pages in their picture books, without their “child-minding” tablets. This is not supposed to be a social commentary, but the subject became “marinized” just recently, when that excellent charity the Sailors’ Society published its latest report into the lives lived at sea by cadets.
Having surveyed some 9000 cadets, the subsequent report considers what it describes as “the first digital seafarer generation”, with one of its elements an interesting focus on the advantages and problems of connectivity.
Nobody who lives in the real world will be surprised by the discovery that some 70% of these young people spend more than three hours online each day. There is an expectation among them that despite the handicaps of distance, all should have access to decent levels of connectivity and an ability to stay in regular touch with family and friends. After all, this is what their shore-side peers expect and if the technology is available, why not them? Perfectly reasonable.
“Doomscrolling” by digitally-connected cadets…
What the Society points out, is that while there are numerous advantages in being digitally connected, when compared with the isolation of the pre-internet days, the problems that are now being recognised among younger shore-side populations could well be magnified in the loneliness of a steel box, far from home. It is not difficult to imagine some lonely cadet, who has been finding life at sea difficult, “doomscrolling” for hours in their cabin and getting even more deeply depressed. Half of those approached reported online bullying or negative behaviour. It is high time that the anti-social elements of connectivity are properly recognised as they apply to vulnerable young people at sea.
There is no shortage of discussion ashore about social pressures from the digital life, where its effect upon what is now described as wellness is plainly obvious. The Society comments on the fact that there is a pressure to appear happy online, and notes the importance of human mentors aboard ship, rather than some ephemeral electronic “friend”. This sort of study is clearly very welcome, but this change in seafarer behaviour and the sea life has long been commented upon by observers.
Years ago, I remember talking to a perceptive tanker Second Officer, who set herself the task of making her shipboard environment more cheerful and the struggles she had in persuading her shipmates to be a bit more social. They would rather, she noted, sit grimly behind their closed cabin doors, eyes on their devices, rather than come out and socialise.
To me, used to ships with lively bars, a junior officer tasked to make the ship a happier place with competitions, and no shut doors, it seemed such a miserable metamorphosis. But nothing about the “modernisation” of the maritime life has lent itself to make life at sea more enjoyable, which is what it ought to be, even though people tell you that enjoyment is not an option. The ruthless reduction of the numbers, beyond that necessary for some sort of social cohesion, the rise of multi-national, multi-lingual and multi-cultural crewing, the banning of the bar by a lot of po-faced American oil company apparatchiks, the treating of cadets as a tax advantage, rather than as an investment in the future, placing a couple of cadets in a ship with nobody who speaks their language, institutional accommodation, the lack of shore leave, and the sheer intensity of modern shipping, under the lash of the accountants make the prospect of an evening’s doom scrolling, seem quite explicable.
(Image from Dreamstime)
*Michael Grey is a former Editor of Lloyd’s List. This column is published with the kind permission of The Maritime Advocate.