I Dislike this Age We Live In

Sometimes I feel like the proverbial old man on the porch, shaking my fist at the modern age.

There are two types of people in the world: those of us looking at screens and those of us who are thoroughly annoyed with the people looking at screens. I mostly fall into the latter category, and because of this, I am rapidly becoming the proverbial old man on the porch, shaking my fist at the world. 

The world I am talking about is, of course, the modern one. The one in which you can sign up to share photos of your breakfast (That's the most beautiful piece of peanut butter toast I've ever seen!); shoot your 140-character thoughts into the universe; plan your perfect DIY wedding via virtual pin boards (Mason jars. Burlap. Twinkle lights. Done.); and basically construct your virtual identity from the ground up. It’s the world in which the primary motions are staring and scrolling. Staring and scrolling, occasionally typing, and taking the rare pause from it all to pay attention to something that has managed to capture our attention. 

Six Stages of Social Media

Nora Ephron, of You’ve Got Mail and Sleepless in Seattle screenwriter fame, has an essay titled “The Six Stages of Email” in which she recounts the evolution of email from infatuation to death. (Infatuation: Look how fast I can communicate! Isn’t this fun! I don’t have to bother with envelopes and stamps and walking to the mailbox. It’s all here! Look, a message! Death: How on earth do I have 1267 messages in my inbox? This is not fun. Where’s that friendly little voice telling me I’ve got mail? And where is Tom Hanks? If I get one more newsletter from that arthritis organization I supposedly unsubscribed to, I will scream.)  

Well, let me tell you how I've applied Nora Ephron's ideas to my life. I think about the six stages. I think about the number of social media sites I subscribe to. I think about the multiplication charts of my youth and land on a number. I get overwhelmed. I bang my head against the wall.

Unlike my losing battle with email, my neglect of social media is visible. If you Google me right now, you will find the skeleton of a LinkedIn Profile I signed up for and never bothered to fill out. You will discover my Twitter account, last updated seven months ago, during a rare moment during which I needed to tell the world I was making savory oatmeal cookies. You may come across my Pinterest boards, and while I have upwards of 1200 pins, Pinterest enthusiasts would consider me a moderate contributor. I still log in to Facebook, but I’m more of a creepy voyeur than an active participant. Instagram and I went through the 6 stages so quickly I never even signed up for an account. What's worse is that these sites, and my resistance to update them, read like timestamped chronology of my social media negligence. 
 

If a tree falls in the forest and no one Instagramed, Tweeted or tagged it in a status update, did that tree exist? Did it have any friends? Was it liked? Probably not. 

I’m not shaking my fist at Twitter or Facebook. I'm not upset with Instagram or social media in general. I’m shaking my fist at the idea that I have to have both a social media presence as well as a "real-life" one. I'm shaking my fist at the generation of screen-staring morons we have become, the people gazing into phones, stroking polished screens as if they were flat and tiny beloved pets. I’m aggravated because if we are looking at screens, we are not as likely to look at what else is happening around us. If we are looking at screens, we are not giving attention to whomever we happen to be with. If we're constantly updating and grooming our social media selves, what happens to who we are in the real world?

One of the most disappointing evenings of my twenties was a “Friendsgiving” spent with fifteen other twenty and thirty-somethings. I was a fringe friend to this particular group of people, and had spent the past year or so wishing they would invite me to more of their gatherings. 

During dinner we prayed, dished up food, and then passed around an iPhone to watch a video of a ribbon dance performance at some mega church in Texas. And since YouTube videos are like the Lays potato chips of modern media, “Pass the iPhone,” became a more prominent dinner request than “Pass the salt.” Following dinner we settled into the living room, turned on Elf, and every iPhone-toting hipster in the room downloaded the same game and set about trying to one-up everyone's high scores. I sat on the couch with the screen-staring ghosts of Friendsgiving present and wondered what could possibly be so compelling about a game that—as far as I could tell—involved maneuvering a virtual ball through a hamster maze. And as I considered this thought, I became more and more irritated with the whole ordeal.

I’ll admit that I can be idealistic. I'll admit that my idea of holidays may be traditional or even old-fashioned. I’ll admit that, on this particular night, I had Scrabble tiles in my purse, in case anyone was up for a game of Speed Scrabble. I'll admit that I may not be cut out for Friendsgiving gatherings with twenty-something hipsters. 

But I had been looking forward to hanging out with these fun, interesting people and having fun, interesting conversations with them. Maybe my disappointment came more from unmet expectations than the actual behavior of the group. It could have been an off-night. Perhaps there was some other group dynamic I wasn’t aware of that caused them to withdraw into their tiny screens. 

But I left Thanksgiving feeling confused, frustrated and sad. How was it that I could spend an entire evening with 15 people and feel like I hadn’t connected with any of them? Were these people really having more fun than I was, or was that just how it seemed on Instagram? I never saw any photos from that night, but I’m guessing they were lovely. I wish I could have been there. 

Back to that old man...

While I may have proverbial old-man-on-the-porch tendencies, I don’t wish to throw out the proverbial screen baby with the social media bathwater. Social media is not the problem. Screens are not the problem. What makes me shake my fist is the fact that screens eclipse the things I love. I love long, lingering dinners with friends and family. I love sitting at the dinner table, long after a meal is over, picking at bits of arugula still left on my plate, listening to stories and following rabbit-trail conversations. I love filling my coffee mug for the third time, pouring another glass of wine, putting the kettle on for tea. I like being present. I value quality over quantity. Enter screens and social media into the equation and you get a different outcome.