Love The One You’re With?

Texting is a hot button right now. People either love it (those doing it) or hate it (those being ignored by the person doing it.)

Oprah is even throwing her clout around getting people to promise not to text or phone while driving. A good idea.

The last time we visited Brittany, both times we took her out to dinner she was texting through most of the meal. She seemed to think it was OK because she included us in the “conversation” with her friend. She’s not the only one though, and it has always bothered me when people answer their cell phones while we’re having a conversation. I believe that “in person” trumps people who can leave messages.

There was an article in the Boston Globe recently that discussed how kids use electronic devices as a crutch: to get out of social interaction, as an excuse for being rude, or as a way to always appear occupied. The writer called it fauxting. One of the online commenters wrote, “There are worse things in the world than fauxting, but it’s a pretty sad commentary on the isolation that so many feel even in an era of unprecedented connectivity. You may have 600 friends on Facebook but how many do you really know? How many would you want to have lunch with? You may follow hundreds of people on Twitter but how many of them would you follow to the ends of the earth? We are, on one hand, extremely connected, constantly trying to find bonds with another person. And on the other hand, we're insular and isolating with our behavior when we need to actually interact.”

It’s hard to wrap our minds around how Facebook both connects and separates us and how texting and emails keep us up on each others lives, but rarely creates real conversation.

I had to laugh at Betty White’s Saturday Night Live monologue when she called Facebook a great way to waste an afternoon. She said in her day people felt like it was punishment to look at friends’ vacation pictures and pictures of their children and grandchildren.

And yet, maybe Facebook has its place there. I love to look at pictures that friends put up. Maybe it’s the difference between someone inviting you over to “see my home movies” and posting them for you to “look or not”. I also love that on someone’s birthday their “wall” fills up with Happy Birthday messages and that when someone is sick or has a family member who is sick the prayers pour in. It can really be something!

I do think people care. And they certainly want to stay connected. People simply need to concentrate on one thing (or one person) at a time. Just because Brittany can dry her hair with one hand, text with the other and talk to me, doesn’t mean she should.

In today’s world we’re overloaded with ways to interact, but we’ll figure it out.

We’ll have to, because they’re not going away.