The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Episode: The screens between us
Air Date: January 13, 2025
Guest: Christine Rosen, Senior Fellow at AEI & Author of The Extinction of Being Human in a Disembodied World

Episode Overview

This episode explores how our ever-increasing reliance on technology is fundamentally reshaping what it means to be human. Sean Illing talks with Christine Rosen about her new book, which examines the “extinction of experience” in a digital, disembodied world. Together, they dive into what is lost when our lives are mediated by screens, what makes us human in the first place, and whether we’re at risk of losing essential elements of our humanity—all while searching for ways to resist these losses.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What Does It Mean to Be Human Now?

• Question of Embodiment: Being human means being embodied, with natural lifespans and physical limits. Tech enables us to “forget” this by letting us live in abstracted, digital worlds.

  “We are in a world that we have created with these brilliant, powerful tools at our disposal that have allowed us to forget sometimes that we are physically embodied people...”
  — Christine Rosen, 03:29

• Mediated vs. Unmediated Experience: The concept of “mediation” refers to any technology that stands between us and direct experience—smartphones, wearables, computers, etc.

2. Are We Asking the Right Questions About Progress?

• Unintended Consequences: Western society, especially in America, is highly techno-optimistic and focused on continual improvement without sufficient concern for unseen costs.

• Delayed Reckoning: With social media, we’re only now debating harms we should have anticipated a decade ago, particularly regarding impacts on children and vulnerable groups.

  “We should remember some of those humbling lessons, which is we don't know the unintended consequences of our use of these."
  — Christine Rosen, 07:01

• Disruption in Intimate Spaces: Technology can erode family and social bonds, a factor often ignored in initial tech enthusiasm.

3. What Human Skills and Experiences Are Disappearing?

• Face-to-Face Interaction: Direct, physical socializing is being replaced by screen time and digital communication.

  “We are now living in a world where we can actively choose not to look each other in the eye on a regular basis, not communicate with each other physically in person, in the same physical space.”
  — Christine Rosen, 08:27

• Soft (Human) Skills: Skills like reading social cues, facial expressions, and negotiating discomfort are vanishing. Even very young children are missing out on organic emotional learning, increasingly needing explicit instruction in empathy and expression.

• Degradation of Social Capital: Small interactions (pleasantries, eye contact) are essential for communal life but are becoming rare.

• Mass Deskilling:

  “If we don't practice those skills, we lose them… They're called soft skills, but they're actually quite important. I think of them as very crucial skills. They're human skills. They can't be easily mimicked by technology or robots or algorithms...”
  — Christine Rosen, 12:53

4. The Rise of Timidity and Aversion to Risk

• Avoiding Human Discomfort: Tech rewards convenience, seamlessness, and comfort, discouraging us from engaging in the effort and vulnerability needed for human relationships.

  “There's a sort of threat assessment risk people make when they go out into the world of like, I don't want to deal with people. People are difficult. And this is a true statement. People can be very challenging to deal with.”
  — Christine Rosen, 14:13

• Walter Benjamin’s ‘Poverty of Experience’: As direct, physical experience fades, we find relief in “simplest and most comfortable” existence—losing depth and resilience as a result.

5. Are We Becoming More Machine-Like?

• Machine-Mimicking Relationships: Human relationships, including sex and dating, are being “optimized” according to technological logic—leading to less actual intimacy and more “performative” interactions.

  “When you’re just generally assuming that you’ll know someone by a menu of options…think about how that makes us understand another human being who can be complicated...”
  — Christine Rosen, 17:14

• Porn, Dating, and Convenience: The rise of easily accessible digital substitutes (like porn or dating apps) offer ease but at the expense of real-world connection, intimacy, and growth.

6. Is This Just a Classic Moral Panic?

• Historical Perspective: Technological change has always prompted concern (Socrates vs. writing, etc.), but not all change is progress. Some destroys vital qualities.

  “We lack…an ability to distinguish between the new and the improved. You hear new and improve. That’s how every new thing is marketing, right? But quite frankly…not every new thing is an improvement.”
  — Christine Rosen, 24:03

• Critical Need for Moral Deliberation: Decisions about technology’s role are ethical ones; avoiding this discussion is harmful.

7. Information vs. Direct Experience

• Living in Abstraction: We're coming to know the world through filtered information, not direct engagement, leading to a dangerous gap between knowledge and wisdom.
• Embodied Cognition & Real Learning: The brain and body work together—for example, handwriting boosts comprehension compared to typing, which demonstrates the loss when the physical is abandoned.

8. Who Benefits from Disembodied Living?

• Class Divides: Real, human interaction is becoming a luxury good. Silicon Valley elites keep their kids off the products they sell to others.

  “Human interaction is rapidly becoming a luxury good for the wealthy... That is not what the people who can’t afford that get. They are getting the therapy chatbot, they are getting the online YouTube video..."
  — Christine Rosen, 28:46

• “Reality Privilege” Debate: Some, like Marc Andreessen, argue “reality is overrated”—but Rosen pushes back, calling this vision dystopian and classist.

  “Reality is not a privilege. Reality is what each of us should be able to have the freedom and the opportunity to shape for ourselves.”
  — Christine Rosen, 31:06

9. What Does a New Humanism Look Like?

• Policy & Personal Solutions: Support for age limits on social media, smarter regulation, but also calls for personal vigilance—adopting “Amish” pre-selection: carefully considering downstream effects before adopting technologies in private life.

  “Be more Amish… I mean, think, think before you embrace a new technology, particularly in your private world, think through all the worst case scenarios.”
  — Christine Rosen, 35:21

• Role Modeling for Children: Parents must model the behavior they wish to see, not just enforce rules.

10. Can We Have a Collective Cultural Conversation?

• Atomization & Individual Remedies: The overwhelming fragmentation of society makes consensus difficult, but possible starting points include personal exercises—like keeping phones out of the bedroom and embracing "fallow brain time" (unstructured, device-free moments).

  “Do not go to bed with your phone. Do not have your phone in your bedroom… Let your mind wander. Daydream. Look around you.”
  — Christine Rosen, 39:02

11. Is There Hope for Course-Correction?

• Signs of Change:

  • Increased skepticism and debate about social media’s effect on kids
  • Younger generations embracing analog habits, phone-free dinners
  • Artists, venues, and coffee shops creating tech-free spaces

  “Artists...performers who make you put your phone away to attend the concert. I love that. Coffee shops that say no laptops. I love that. ... All of those are little glimmers of hope and pushing back on what I think is a has for too long been an accepted idea that the new is always an improvement.”
  — Christine Rosen, 42:49

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On New Technology:

  “Not every new thing is an improvement. Sometimes important things are destroyed by the new thing.”
  — Christine Rosen, 24:03

• On Human Skills:

  “The challenge of connecting to people is part of what allows us to be flourishing human beings. We actually should have to work at it. The effort is part of the reward.”
  — Christine Rosen, 12:53

• On Avoiding Discomfort:

  “The easier path is just not to do it at all. But the reason it's hard is because it also makes us better people.”
  — Christine Rosen, 15:24

• On Techno-Elite Hypocrisy:

  “They don't let their kids use the technology and the social media platforms that they sell to the rest of us... They do not get high on their own supply, nor do their children.”
  — Christine Rosen, 28:46

• On “Reality Privilege”:

  “The ultimate privilege is telling everyone else to check theirs while they get to live in a reality they can afford to live in and telling everyone else they should just suck it up in the virtual world. Because isn’t the virtual world great?”
  — Christine Rosen, 31:06

Important Timestamps

• 03:29 – Rosen on embodiment and what it means to be human
• 07:01 – On society’s techno-optimism and unintended consequences
• 08:27 – Discussing the loss of face-to-face interaction
• 12:53 – The “deskilling” of human interaction skills
• 14:13 – Examining timidity and the aversion to risk in relationships
• 17:14 – Becoming more “machine-like” in intimacy
• 24:03 – The need to distinguish “new” from “improved”
• 28:46 – Class divides and the luxury of human interaction
• 31:06 – The “reality privilege” rebuttal
• 35:21 – Rosen’s advice: “Be more Amish”
• 39:02 – The day-long phone-free personal challenge
• 42:49 – Signs of hope: youth skepticism, tech-free spaces

Conclusion

This candid conversation lays bare the costs of a heavily mediated life and the virtues at risk in our digital transition. Christine Rosen urges careful resistance to the “extinction of experience” and mindful reevaluation of technology’s place in our lives, both for the sake of our own flourishing and that of future generations. For listeners considering their own relationship to screens, the episode offers both philosophical depth and practical advice—and a call for collective introspection before humanity loses something essential.