Social media, interacting with people online, on face-to-face phone calls, in messages, on Facebook or Twitter, in emails -- none of it is a substitute for flesh and blood time. We need to be with people. We need to sit across from the them and share conversation.
I'm thankful for our long-distance ways to communicate with those we love. It can help for sure, but it needs to be in addition to in-person encounters rather than in place of.
People are forgetting how to talk face-to-face with eye contact. When people spend all their time with screen conversation, they begin to fear face-to-face conversation. People have become super "courageous" in print but super "timid" when with others. This ought not be.
We ought to never write anything in cyberspace that we wouldn't say to the person. Our society has flipflopped in so many areas. Good has become evil. Evil has become good. Time on a computer has become preferable to time with a person.
It is a slow slide into some weird cyber life that isn't a real life at all. We are flesh and blood. We can't live in social media pages.
If we look back on this progression of cyberspace taking over our lives, we can see it was a slow thing. It is cool to be able to send emails and talk to people that way. It is a convenient way to have conversations. And then there is so much news online. You could spend all day and all night online and still discover new things. Then it is easy to entertain kids this way. Give them a smart phone or an iPad and they are busy for hours. But as we had our guard down to this new technology it sucked us in and took from us life. Brains have changed because of technology -- and not in good ways. Technology is very addicting. My two youngest kids see me as a tech-nazi because I have limited severely their use of technology in the house (don't feel sorry for them -- they both are on computers all day in school so they're fine). I was worried about their imaginations. Cyberspace can encourage creativity if used rightly, but it often contributes to imagination muscle atrophy if used too much.
I want us all to be able to talk to each other, but we are losing that ability.
I really think this stuff is out of control in our world.
The real stuff no longer has any appeal to many people. They don't want real relationships (that are often messy and sometimes tense and sometimes will get volatile but also are incredibly fulfilling). They want relationships like seen online or on TV. Those are easy though. You just cut them off when conflict arises.
Make it a point to have real interactions with people. Look people in the eye. Put down your phones. Let your kids be bored rather than be mindlessly playing on smart devices. Boredom for kids is a good thing -- make them start building up that imagination muscle -- you adults do the same thing.
If you are really addicted to your smart phone turn it in for a non-smart phone. I read of a couple who did this. They found their smart phones were interfering with their real lives so they got push button phones.
Take back your life. Use the cyberworld. Don't let it use you. You are worth far more than that.