I’ve been thinking about writing this blog for a month, and
I am going to post that I’ve written it on Facebook. I will check back
frequently to see if people have looked at it. I might go to the stats for my
blog to see if anyone has looked at it, probably even check where in the world
people may have looked at it (yay! One person in Czechoslovakia likes me!).
Any comments on Facebook will all show up in my messages,
linked to my LinkedIn page, and comments there or on the blog will go to my
email. But not to my regular email; comments to my blog go to an email address
I rarely use but which gets forwarded to my regular email address. Maybe one or
two people might text me about it on my cel phone or call me (it’s true, some
people still do that) on my landline. Thank heaven I don’t have a twitter account or
a web page; there aren’t enough hours in the day for me to keep track of so
many forms of talktalktalk and simultaneously keep myself clean, fed, and
employed.
Ironically, it might be a bit rant-y about how electronic
communication is melting our minds. So you can leave now if you feel compelled
to wander through layers of YouTube videos instead. I won’t hold it against
you. I’ve been known to get lost in that vortex as well.
If you still have the capacity (and you’re still here), you
should read this: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/
It’s a 2008 article by Nicholas Carr, published in The Atlantic, that considers the way our
brains are being reconfigured by our exposure to various forms of media. It’s longer
than your average USA Today article
and definitely longer than something you might find on Facebook or Buzzfeed,
and infinitely longer than any tweet. And it doesn’t say we’re getting
stupider, or more antisocial, or going blind from staring at screens or getting
fat from so much time sitting in front of our laptops. But it’s important
because it talks about our powers of concentration, our ability to focus on a
single task.
Another irony: I first read this article on paper, and was
fascinated by it. Today when I went to find a handy link for this blog, I had a
hard time re-reading it because of all of the moving ads interspersed
throughout the text (oooh, maybe I really do
want to buy that LED-lit dress that changes color when I walk…). Focusing on an article about focusing was virtually impossible with all of the shiny stuff floating around.
Anecdotally, I’m discovering that there are a lot of people
suffering from depression, anxiety, obsessive behaviors and ruined
relationships because of the time they spend enmeshed in a web of media. It’s
as if they’re slogging through a jungle with a machete, cutting back vines and
swatting mosquitos the size of Smartcars and fending off snakes and leopards to
get…they forget where. But along the way
they begin to feel that if they step away they might miss something; they think
that the amount of friends or followers
is more important than the quality of
their friends or followers. And if they put something out there and it gets
responses it’s almost a high – responses are validation, camaraderie, …love. How
could one not want that feeling? Who wouldn’t want to see that other people
think the same way they do, or support them, or at the very least, read what
they have to say?
So they go back, and back, and back.
BUT. I have had people send me texts when they are in the same
room with me, or send me messages that aren’t complete – they admit later they
forgot what they were going to say, but pressed send anyway. I have friends
that before they even pee in the morning will check Facebook, or will let
everyone know they’re peeing by posting about it on Facebook (okay, that’s possibly an exaggeration, but it’s the minutiae like
that that boggles my mind). It’s become such a habit to check their various
forms of media that they don’t leave the house without a charger for their
device of choice; they can’t be off the phone or the iPad in traffic or in a
restaurant or even among their family and friends. Their brains have been altered; they need a constant fix.
Think cocaine, only without the drip at the back of the
throat. Lots of speedy babbling, but not always about anything of value or that
makes sense.
I dipped my toe into the Great Lake of Facebook because
other writers told me I really needed a page; they also advised me to get a
Twitter account (but I just don’t have all that much to say a lot of the time,
and, as evidenced by this blog, I do NOTHING in 127 or 144 or however many
characters Twitter limits you to when I do). I don’t have a web page, or a
“platform.” I find that even with the relatively small amount of time I spend
monitoring what social media contact I do have, I am losing my ability to focus
on the tasks at hand, much less write creatively. If someone actually wants to publish me
eventually, might they then decide I don’t have enough of a following to
promote my work to take me on? It’s a
conundrum.
I have a landline
phone, people – the kind of phone line that if all of the power goes out, I
will still be able to call all five of the other people in the US who still
have a landline to see how they’re doing before everyone’s looted. I was
perfectly happy with that until all of this “media” became a “necessity.” Well,
that and texting. Which I frequently used, originally, as evidence to point out
to one of my then-teenagers what they said they were going to do as opposed to what they actually did. Therefore, I am completely cool with texting.
I want to be clear: This isn’t a media bash. I have learned
a lot from various types of social media, and research is far less onerous than
it was when we used card catalogs and microfilm. Correspondence with friends in
far off places is less expensive and nearly instantaneous. News travels faster,
and globally, even though it’s sometimes difficult to tell what is real and
true news. I think it’s important to figure out how to discriminate between
what is valid information and what’s just sensational and potentially hazardous
to your judgment and time management and real-life relationships.
And it’s important to know when to stop…to stop getting
sucked in to ignorant arguments sane people would never have in person, to stop
and look up from your little screen at what’s actually going on around you, to
stop looking for gratification without and look instead for ways to be happy
and directed from within.
Your brain will thank you.
I now open the floor to anyone who feels that I should still
totally get a Twitter account…
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