Publish at December 10 2025 Updated December 10 2025
Is life spent in the company of screens, the intensification of digitally mediated interactions and the gradual distancing from the living teaching the human mind to inhabit spaces increasingly disconnected from the sensible world?
Ultimately, this trajectory could make a life in a space capsule, linked to others only by information flows, conceivable, bearable - and for some desirable. This is speculation, but it is based on several well-documented developments.
Over the course of a century, industrialized societies have already considerably lengthened the daily periods of mediated "withdrawal". In France between 1960 and 1980, television gradually took up several hours of the family's evening. In 2010, Insee estimates that the average time spent watching television is around three hours a day, to which can be added forty-five minutes of domestic computer use(Insee ).
This time is no longer spent interacting with people or environments close to us, but frequenting a world of images and narratives at a distance. Today, the dynamic is shifting towards mobile screens: the smartphone is present in 93% of French households, and is becoming the preferred screen for 15-24 year-olds to watch videos, in a context where total video consumption averages 4 h 40 per day.(Le Monde.fr ) Everyday living space is being transformed into a "connected bubble", where the immediate material environment becomes the backdrop to a mental life mainly anchored to digital flows.
These data do not describe a simple abstract "screen time", but a deep-seated habit of withdrawing into a universe of mediated interactions, sometimes to the detriment of embodied bonds.
Bernard Stiegler analyzes this transformation as a reconfiguration of our relationship to time and the world through "tertiary retentions" - those technical traces (images, sounds, flows) that direct attention and protention, i.e., the expectation of the future(arsindustrialis.org ).
An increasing proportion of our experience no longer comes from direct encounters with living things, but from these technical memories that anticipate our desires, capture our attention and organize our rhythms.
Hartmut Rosa, in his diagnosis of the "acceleration" of modernity, shows that this densification of flows and options produces new forms of alienation:
Sherry Turkle, based on interviews over several decades, describes a paradox: relational technologies support an ideal of autonomy and control, while at the same time paving the way for a "alone together" lifestyle, physically alone, surrounded by artifacts and avatars, connected to others by carefully edited fragments of messages(mediastudies.asia).
A progression
Historically, we can read a succession of stages that progressively increase the times of direct sensory disconnection and mediated symbolic connection.
French surveys of digital practices show that, far from a homogeneous block of "digital natives", there is a wide diversity of uses, but also groups for whom leisure activities are mostly conducted online(OpenEdition Journals). In this configuration, the immediate physical environment can become secondary: a stable setting for a mind occupied elsewhere.
In an individual born today, the onto-genetic trajectory can be schematically described as a series of gradual trainings to detachment. In childhood, screens are often used to soothe, occupy, lull to sleep; the moment of sensory awakening to the world (textures, smells, silhouettes) coexists with frequent moments when attention is captured by a two-dimensional flow of light.
Studies on the impact of early sensory experiences suggest that the availability or scarcity of certain types of stimulation modulate the speed and nature of cognitive development(Frontiers ).
Even without massive sensory impoverishment, a different distribution of experiences (more time on 2D visual stimuli, less time in unstructured environments) can influence the way space, time and the body are represented.
In adolescence, the focus shifts to the architecture of relationships. The smartphone becomes a central operator in relationships: invitations, signs of belonging and conflicts all pass through it. The material environment may be a room, a bus, a sidewalk; what counts are conversations in groups, reactions to stories, visible or invisible markers of status.
Turkle shows how this life "in flux" enables each person to construct a controlled, reversible, adjustable self-image - which gives physical distance a new status: no longer a lack, but a condition of ease for daring certain words or masks.(mediastudies.asia )
A step has been taken: the absence of the other is no longer necessarily experienced as a lack; it becomes the support for a filtered and controlled link.
This habit of mediated distance is obviously not enough to make the "loneliness in the void" of interplanetary travel acceptable. Studies into the psychology of isolation and confinement, carried out in Antarctica or in experiments such as Mars-500 (520 days of confinement simulating a Martian mission), show clearly identified risks: sleep disturbances, mood swings, interpersonal tensions, episodes of withdrawal or disengagement(ResearchGate).
Recent summaries of the behavioral risks of long-duration space missions highlight the combination of stressful factors: confinement, social isolation, microgravity, disruption of circadian cycles, exposure to radiation, increasing distance from Earth(NASA ).
Shorter confinements (around 30 days) sometimes seem to be well tolerated, and even associated with a slight improvement in certain cognitive performances, but at the cost of a measurable increase in stress.(PubMed ) Under these conditions, the acceptability of cosmic solitude relies on a combination of psychological selection, training and support systems, as much as on dispositions acquired in ordinary life.
Nevertheless, it is still possible to outline intermediate stages in which current digital habits play a role. The first stage involves "micro-evasions": compulsively consulted notifications, scrolling through feeds for a few seconds or minutes whenever reality becomes too slow or too intense.
These repeated movements of withdrawal and return lead us to consider our presence in the world as reversible and optional.
The second stage corresponds to prolonged immersions: video games, TV series, virtual worlds that occupy several hours in a row in a relatively stable sensory environment (low diversity of sounds, static posture, artificial light). These are situations where the body is physically confined, sometimes in a small space, while the mind travels far and wide.
A third stage manifests itself in fully mediated forms of socialization - long-distance romantic relationships, exclusively online communities of interest, remote working - which make it possible to envisage a daily life that relies heavily on mediated communication. At this stage, a significant proportion of key interactions (work, friendship, leisure) could, in principle, continue to exist if the body were enclosed in a module millions of kilometers away, provided sufficient bandwidth were available.
Research into the psychology of Mars missions already envisages the creation of pre-flight psychological training protocols, aimed at developing strategies for reducing aversive situations, group routines and self-regulation skills in closed simulated environments(ScienceDirect).
We can imagine that generations who have grown up in interface-saturated environments, accustomed to collaborative work platforms, avatars and immersive virtual realities, would adapt more easily to these training devices and extend them seamlessly into a space habitat. In this scenario, physical solitude would not be perceived as absolute isolation, but as an intensification of an already familiar presence-absence regime: bodies here, relationships elsewhere.
There remains the question of "emptiness". The void we're talking about here is not just cosmological; it's also a potential symbolic void, linked to the rarefaction of experiences of resonance with the living.
Rosa defines resonance as a mode of relationship in which the subject feels touched by the world and is able to respond to it, in a mutually transformative way. Alienation, on the other hand, is a relation to the world "without relation", where things, others and oneself become inert, unavailable(revuephares.com ).
The multiplication of screens can alternately favor one or the other: on the one hand, encounters, learning and global mobilization; on the other, standardized flows, scattered attention and a feeling of interchangeability. When this second aspect predominates, the idea of leaving an Earth perceived as saturated, hostile or indifferent can be colored by a kind of attraction to a sanitized, entirely technically mastered elsewhere.
Data on teenagers' mental health, however, suggest an uncertain balance. Intensive, addictive screen use is associated with high levels of distress, anxiety disorders and suicidal attempts(CDC ).
At the same time, recent international surveys indicate that more and more young people are voluntarily limiting their use of smartphones to preserve their well-being and ability to concentrate, signalling a critical reappropriation of these technologies.(The Guardian )
Work on time in nature shows that regular contact with natural environments supports emotional regulation and attention quality, as a counterpoint to prolonged exposure to screens.(analesdepediatria.org )
The trajectory towards acceptance of cosmic solitude is therefore not linear; it coexists with powerful counter-movements seeking to re-anchor existences in living environments, as witnessed by spaceman Thomas Pesquet.
In terms of temporality, we can imagine that, over a horizon of fifty to one hundred years, three layers will advance in concert.
In this context, "solitude in the void" becomes acceptable if it is in fact a solitude densely populated by screens: videoconferencing interfaces, cultural archives, virtual realities, simulations of terrestrial or extraterrestrial landscapes, social robots. This is no longer emptiness in the strict sense, but a techno-symbolic cocoon.
The risk then lies in a lasting disaffection for the forms of attachment to the living that have historically structured human subjectivities: seasonal cycles, the presence of animals, the density of cities, the ruggedness of environments. The more the onto-genetic trajectory unfolds in homogenized, air-conditioned, visually standardized environments, the more the contrast with the uncertainty and variability of natural environments can seem tiresome, even dissuasive.
Yet the same authors who diagnose these risks are also outlining ways of forking out. Stiegler proposes a "pharmacology" of technologies, insisting that they can heal as well as poison, depending on the regimes of use and the institutions that frame them(OpenEdition Journals ).
From the perspective of long-term space travel, these proposals invite us to design habitats and temporalities that maintain a strong relational quality - between crew members, with terrestrial communities, with symbolic forms of the Earth itself - rather than simply filling the void with digital flows.
In short, the continuous use of screens, the intensification of digital interactions and the relative distance from the living world all point to a social and individual apprenticeship of disconnection from the immediate environment. This learning process could facilitate the acceptance of highly mediated environments, such as space habitats. But accumulated knowledge about the effects of isolation, the psychic fragilities associated with addictive use, and the power of experiences of resonance with the living show that solitude in a vacuum only becomes truly acceptable - and possibly desirable - if it remains woven from rich relationships and shared narratives.
The trajectory is not written in advance. It will depend on collective choices as to whether screen technologies serve above all to accustom us to the absence of the world, or on the contrary to better experience its presence and care for it, including from space.
References
Arone, A., et al. (2021). The burden of space exploration on the mental health of astronauts: A narrative review. Frontiers in Psychiatry.
Basner, M., et al. (2014). Psychological and behavioral changes during confinement in a 520-day simulated mission to Mars. PLOS ONE, 9(3), e93298.
Conseil supérieur de l'éducation. (2020). Discourses on screen time: social values and scientific studies. Québec.(cse.gouv.qc.ca)
Commission " Enfants et écrans ". (2024). Children and screens: In search of lost time. Presidency of the French Republic.(elysee.fr)
Gire, F. (2012). Les pratiques des écrans des jeunes français. RESET. Recherches en sciences sociales sur Internet, (1)(OpenEdition Journals)
Nagata, J. M., et al. (2024). Screen time and mental health: A prospective analysis of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study. BMC Public Health, 24, 20102.(BioMed Central)
Rosa, H. (2010). Acceleration. A social critique of time. Paris : La Découverte.
Rosa, H. (2016). Resonance. A sociology of relation to the world. Paris : La Découverte.
Santos, R. M. S., et al. (2023). The associations between screen time and mental health in adolescents: A systematic review. Journal of Affective Disorders.
Schmidt-Persson, J., et al. (2024). Screen media use and mental health of children and adolescents. JAMA Network Open.
Stiegler, B. (1994-2001). La technique et le temps (3 volumes). Paris : Galilée.
Turkle, S. (2011). Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. New York: Basic Books.
Yin, Y., et al. (2023). Long-term spaceflight composite stress induces mental and psychological disorders. Translational Psychiatry, 13, 314.
Insee. (2013). More often alone in front of the screen. Insee Première, 1437.
Arcom. (2025). Tendances audio-vidéo 2025 (data reprinted in Le Monde, April 3, 2025).
You might also like:
The desire to learn tested by science
Fluctuations in the desire and motivation to learn show how the learner's agentivity emerges from isolation to integrate interaction with the environment.
Learning to connect with nature
An ecopsychological approach developed by Joana Macy that helps pedagogy to integrate the challenges of life. Moving from the closed spaces of the school as a monofunctional place of transmission from brain to brain to open spaces of relationship of the whole being in connection with its environment.
The seeds of a green revolution. Innovations in agricultural education
Mobile learning, virtual reality, agroecology.... New technologies and ecology inspire educational variations in the field of agriculture. Exciting!
School in the forest or education through nature
The concept of the school in the forest: the key to education in a time of great environmental challenges?
Scripting distance learning activities in an emergency: what criteria should be used?
To script a distance learning course in a normal context has of course nothing to do with what is done in an emergency. So, in these circumstances, how should we think about pedagogical scripting, or rather, what criteria should we use, as far as possible, in this emergency situation, in order to propose the acceptable? Is there someone behind the screen?
