Talking about social media via social media

I've been hearing a lot of buzz about the effects of social media on our lives and speculation on how they will affect society long term. Articles on this topic (most often with a focus on millennials) are everywhere. I've seen people do media fasts and give up all social networks for a certain period of time, from a week to a month to a year. I am sometimes inspired to do one myself, but honestly I always back out because I feel like I'll miss too much if I don't stay connected somewhat. I like knowing what's going on in my friends' lives and seeing a random snippet from their day, or sometimes seeing something exciting like buying a house or getting engaged.

The problem with completely fasting from social media is that these days we use these avenues to communicate. The people who say, "oh I don't do Facebook, I don't like that stuff," are pretty much saying the same thing as, "oh, I don't do email," or "I don't believe in having a telephone." I'm sure people were resistant to the telephone when it was first invented, but when the world becomes dependent on it and you are the one who is choosing not to use it, it actually cripples you and you might miss out on important information. Communication is the most valuable thing in our lives, because it gives us access to ideas, information, and people. We can't live long without communicating, or we start to go crazy.

But I often wonder if there is a way to do it better. I think having so many different avenues of communication - write on her Facebook wall! tweet him! comment on her blog! text her! email them! send her a snapchat! comment on her instagram photo! - can dilute the specialness of connecting with someone. And while I am probably not going to ever give up these social media apps, I'm realizing I can't rely completely on them. I feel a distinct difference in connecting with someone when it's an email or text versus a Facebook post or a tweet. I think it's something about being private and knowing that person really wanted to talk to me and not just throw words out to the world with my name tagged to it. Obviously a phone call or a face to face meeting trumps all of these things, and I could never get by without having that kind of communication daily.

A couple thoughts:

1. The very nature of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and blogging is such that it causes us to quantify our friendships instead of qualifying them. Without thinking about it, I sometimes find myself counting likes, comments, and followers instead of focusing on the person who is liking and commenting.
I hate that. In real life when you meet someone, you don't see a number pop up by their head that tells you how many people they know. You don't see what all of their friends have said to them that day. It is just an organic conversation between two people, and useless "statistics" aren't involved. Who cares how many friends you have? What's important is how deep those friendships go, and how close to your heart they are.

2. Sometimes seeing tweets and Facebook statuses causes us to have a false sense of connection with people we were once close to. We feel like we have "caught up" with them, without really having any direct communication. I recently realized that if I didn't keep up with what's going on in my friends' lives on Facebook, I would probably feel the urge to text or call them a lot more often because I would actually be missing them. Social media kills that prompting to pick up the phone and call your friend. You don't do it because you don't think of it, because you "see them" on a regular basis. We need to be aware of this and remind ourselves to connect for real, especially friends and family who live far away and we don't actually get to see on a regular basis.

By the way, I googled "millennial" and this, among many others similar, was one of the first photos to show up:

source

This is not what I want our generation to be known for, people! We are so much more than that. We have so much more potential than being good at social media.


So while social media is awesome, and there is so much benefit to being connected to people, we need to recognize when it's taking over. Because relationships can't survive on social media alone. Let's not just be connected to people but instead let's connect with people. And of course a media fast is probably a good way to jump start this. I may have just talked myself into actually doing one.