Social media seems inherently the ultimate pulpit for the self-important. While a site like TweetingTooHard.com invites us to out the self-important, most of the tweets are so mundane, they're forgiveable. Twitter critics like to deprecate navel-gazing tweets about breakfast foods and sundry itches, and while such esoterica of the flotsam of life might not be of "real value" to society and the economy, they too are forgiveable. They're forgiveable because they are, ultimately, harmless.
What I find more disturbing are the tweets I see from self-inflating types who brag about busy-ness. Some of these folks' to-do list per tweet would be longer if more than 140 characters were possible. Even within the 140 character limit, some of these lists test the limits of credulity.
There is a long Christian tradition concerning the notion of busyness into which this post isn't intended to delve.
What I'm wondering about is whether there's a cost to real personal relationships? By real, I mean those deep emotional relationships with friends and family, rather than business relationships. Is there a risk that social media offers an insidious avenue of busyness to connect and broadcast online, to be so busy that there's little time left in a day for family and friends who are not immersed in the online world.
The always-on world of online socializing enables a wholly different level of busyness. At least in the old-school, offline paradigm, there was still some level of social pressure to spend time at home. In our new world order, even when we're not at work, the means to stay tethered are readily available. Some of these electronic tethers are ever so alluring, and the affinity of the social media types for technology makes it easy to rationalize away the increasing encroachment on personal lives.
It brings to mind the modern morality tale of Martha Stewart in which we all reveled. She who built a profitable and mighty myth of ideal family life at the cost of her marriage and family. We enjoyed the delicious irony.
My husband and I have but two or three hours every evening in which we're both awake and in the same physical space. Rather than actually share experiences together during these precious few hours each day, we often find ourselves on message boards, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, websites, etc., only peripherally aware of each other. Luckily, we're aware of our tendency to wander away, and like the person who nods off while driving but wakes with a start, we do also snap out of our reverie and consciously shut down the laptops and smart phones.
Are we at risk of being so tuned in to our online lives that we live our offline lives in a fog, so connected online as to become disconnected offline? How connected is too connected? I'm prepared to concede that there are super-achieving men and women who manage to balance it all. For the rest of us mere mortals, it may take a constant watching and self-awareness to walk this tightrope between two worlds, lest we unconsciously drywall the cat into the wrong side of the wall.
Or is this notion of an offline and an online world merely a false dichotomy constructed by the under-achieving?
What I find more disturbing are the tweets I see from self-inflating types who brag about busy-ness. Some of these folks' to-do list per tweet would be longer if more than 140 characters were possible. Even within the 140 character limit, some of these lists test the limits of credulity.
There is a long Christian tradition concerning the notion of busyness into which this post isn't intended to delve.
What I'm wondering about is whether there's a cost to real personal relationships? By real, I mean those deep emotional relationships with friends and family, rather than business relationships. Is there a risk that social media offers an insidious avenue of busyness to connect and broadcast online, to be so busy that there's little time left in a day for family and friends who are not immersed in the online world.
The always-on world of online socializing enables a wholly different level of busyness. At least in the old-school, offline paradigm, there was still some level of social pressure to spend time at home. In our new world order, even when we're not at work, the means to stay tethered are readily available. Some of these electronic tethers are ever so alluring, and the affinity of the social media types for technology makes it easy to rationalize away the increasing encroachment on personal lives.
It brings to mind the modern morality tale of Martha Stewart in which we all reveled. She who built a profitable and mighty myth of ideal family life at the cost of her marriage and family. We enjoyed the delicious irony.
My husband and I have but two or three hours every evening in which we're both awake and in the same physical space. Rather than actually share experiences together during these precious few hours each day, we often find ourselves on message boards, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, websites, etc., only peripherally aware of each other. Luckily, we're aware of our tendency to wander away, and like the person who nods off while driving but wakes with a start, we do also snap out of our reverie and consciously shut down the laptops and smart phones.
Are we at risk of being so tuned in to our online lives that we live our offline lives in a fog, so connected online as to become disconnected offline? How connected is too connected? I'm prepared to concede that there are super-achieving men and women who manage to balance it all. For the rest of us mere mortals, it may take a constant watching and self-awareness to walk this tightrope between two worlds, lest we unconsciously drywall the cat into the wrong side of the wall.
Or is this notion of an offline and an online world merely a false dichotomy constructed by the under-achieving?
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