Tweets and texts, chatting with friends over Facebook and life as an online experience: is this really what we want?
Canadians are becoming a nation of phone-gazing, social-media savvy droids and it’s not a change for the better.
In this digital disconnect we’re losing the things that keep us human and we need to find a way back to the real world.
We only have so much time in a day to socialize and the problem with spending a lot of that time online or chained to our cell phones is that it takes away from opportunities to interact with the people around us – yes, those folks we don’t talk to because, well, that’d be awkward.
Being constantly consumed by our own little worlds (i.e., our smartphones) really dilutes our experience as human beings.
We only see what we want to see. We miss learning by observing our immediate environment because we’re constantly distracted by the digital glow.
Yes, the digital distraction is seductive. It’s easier to share just a piece of ourselves online, rather than taking the risk of letting other people judge us as a whole person.
But here’s the real tragedy: we’re losing touch with each other and missing out on what it means to be truly connected as people.
Take, for example, the recent study by Italian scientists that shows with 69 billion friend-links on Facebook, degrees of separation have decreased from 5.28 to 4.74 in the last three years. This means we’re all only four friends apart.
But an increased ability to communicate and connect is not the same as being connected. Technology and social networking are merely tools to facilitate communication and simply using these tools does not substitute for communication itself.
And consider this: an online profile cannot possibly capture or represent a complete person. Meaningful human interaction is more than words or pictures. It’s also eating together, laughing together and holding each other as we cry.
So much is unspoken.
Body language, tone of voice and just being in someone’s presence offers bits of information that the digital experience simply cannot replicate.
So what? If we know people in real life and in digital life, shouldn’t that mean we actually end up knowing them better and interacting more? Well, apparently not.
A study by the National Science Foundation, an agency of the U.S. government, shows the number of real friends people have has dropped from about three in the 1980s to two today. ‘Real friends’ are those people you’d drop anything for if they needed you, and who would do the same for you.
Two friends? Really? That’s it? Suddenly, those hundreds of pals on Facebook don’t count for a whole lot.
How long do we let this go on? Does it have to get to the point where we only have one or no real friends before we realize this whole digital life has gone too far?
Let’s not go there. Put down the smartphone. Talk to friends in person, not over Facebook chat. Be present in your surroundings and engage with the people around you.
In other words, be human.