Social Media's Empty Promises of Connection

"we are and therefore I am"

 This is how honour/shame collective society has been described.

 "I share and therefore I am" 

This is how Sherry Turkle, researcher and author of "Reclaiming Conversation" describes our modern social media saturated society in the TED TALK above - Please take the time to watch it.  

We are obsessed with connection, but we are avoiding conversation and ending up with isolation.

She talks about how we fear being alone and yet with social media we are constantly trying to overcome loneliness.  And in the process we are cutting ourselves off from the very thing we want.

She says:

• Make room for solitude
• Reclaim spaces for conversation - like the kitchen
• We need to listen to each other - including the boring bits

She says people tell her: "Life is hard, relationships are filled with risk. And then there's technology, simpler, hopeful, optimistic, ever young...."

It is true - life is hard, relationships are filled with risk.  But we will never enjoy the beauty of the mountaintop without the risk of the climb.  Social Media tells us the lie that we can get all the beauty of relationships without the face-to-face work of relationships, and we are trying to gain identity from social media's promise of connection.

We need to stop, think, pause and listen to each other and not just be rushed to get onto the next thing, or write the next text message.  We need to value the person in front of us and not keep treating them as unimportant.  And as Sherry says, we need to be willing to let people talk and be willing to listen - to tune in even to the boring bits.  We need to think more about what the person needs to say, not just what we think we need to hear.

While technology may be useful to some degree, it will never give us real relationships or identity.

And on the other hand, maybe our fear of solitude and quietness testifies to the fact that we are seeking identity and belonging from people first rather than God.

You see if we converse and truly connect with God in relationship, even when we are alone in the sense of not being with other human beings, we aren't really alone.

A sweet little girl that I used to babysit many years ago came home from pre-school one day and in answer to her mother's question, "So who did you play with in the playground today?"....she said "no-one, I just played by myself, but that's ok because I just talked with Jesus while I played"

If we stop seeking significance, honour, belonging and the feeling of being 'wanted' or 'needed' by people around us and instead seek relationship with God first, we will be free to take the face-to-face relationship risks and do the hard work of listening and 'being' with others.
But we will also not be reliant on others and constantly keeping up social media and virtual 'connection' with people at the expense of the real people in front of us. 
We will also not be fearing solitude, because we will know the comfort and presence of God with us, even if we are not having other people around us. 

While God created us for social interaction, we must not let that social interaction become an idol that we feel we can't live without...it won't deliver want it promises.