Is Technology Making us More Community Oriented or Less?
Technology has revolutionized the way we connect with one another. Dan Doriani’s The New Man: Becoming a Man After God’s Heart says this about technology and mobility: “Mobility is part of the culture of freedom that Americans treasure, but it destroys friendships by severing the regular contact friends need. It ends the joyful retelling of shared triumphs and sorrows—the tales of the unbearable boss, the impossible task accomplished. Mobility separates friends, and men recover slowly because they hardly try to recover. Mobility encourages rootlessness. As we haul up the anchors of family, history, and tradition, we become vulnerable to the call to reinvent ourselves.”1 How true! Our storytelling has now devolved into one or two text messages with emojis thrown in for effect. Text messages and “likes” will never take the place of face-to-face communication.
My daughter, Lauryn, recently returned from studying abroad. She experienced so many incredible things and posted a lot of pictures on Facebook and Instagram. Although I followed her on social media, I longed to see her face-to-face to hear the stories behind those pictures and videos I was seeing. I wanted to hear the details of the events unfolding in the Twittersphere. Unfortunately, a lot of us have substituted this quick yet perhaps incomplete method of sharing for that in-person communication that is so vital to our souls. I wanted to see her facial expressions and sense her body language as she shared the experiences of a lifetime.
How has technology replaced in person and face to face communication?
Do you think that is hurting us?