When Not to Use Technology for Connection
This holiday season, many of us are reflecting on how we connect with others. While social media can help us stay in touch, it often leaves us feeling isolated and drained. In The Joy of Missing Out: Finding Balance in a Wired World, Christina Crook explores how our tech-driven lives can limit deeper connections and offers insights into cultivating a richer online and offline existence.
As we focus on savoring the moment, slowing down, and finding balance, we have a great opportunity to reassess how we connect. Social media isn’t the only tool for meaningful communication. If you’re looking for ways to create deeper connections with the ones you love, check out The Joy of Missing Out.
We Fast to Go Deeper
The computer screen bulldozes our doubts with its bounties and conveniences. It is so much our servant that it would seem churlish to notice that it is also our master.
— Nicholas Carr
“It is useful to think of the news as an environment,” say Kevin Barnhurst and John Nerone, authors of The Form of News. “The newspaper industry, and now all Internet media, set up a panorama of distant events . . . and readers feel empowered because otherwise inaccessible places come within their reach. Against that backdrop, the newspaper sets up an intimate diorama filled with familiar faces and voices.” When reading the news in print or online, they say, people get “jostled and annoyed, but feel smarter and better connected, if only because they know what to grumble about.”
Think of the way you feel when reading, watching, or listening to your favorite media personality: we are drawn there because it feels both comfortable and unpredictable. Like the best kind of relationship, it is both familiar and exciting, and we keep coming back for more.Social media and news sites, where we spend the lion’s share of our time online, are designed in every way to keep us there for as long as possible. Because I am a freelance writer, I know that online editors are looking for one thing and one thing alone: clickable content. More clicks result in more pages and more ads seen. Simple. The Internet is monetized at every turn. Facebook remained ad-free, coasting on its cool cred until it had over a billion users, then they sold out. Make no mistake, Silicon Valley wants you online, and they want you to stay there. But the longer we remain online, the shallower our real-life connections can become. Our attention is diverted; we are spread too thin.
If we remain fixed to our screens, we rarely dive deeper, push ourselves to swim out farther than the familiar routes we travel online. Even ideas that strike us as profound when we encounter them online rarely elicit more than a “like” or “share.” If we want all of this knowledge to go further, our engagements to go deeper, then we need to take them offline. That’s what good friends and good conversations do. They let us step out of our algorithm.
“One of the great challenges of today’s digital thinking tools is knowing when not to use them,” says Clive Thompson in his book Smarter Than You Think, “and when to rely on the powers of older and slower technologies, like paper and books.”
We Fast to Know
Today I live in Toronto, but the last 30 years were spent growing, schooling, loving and working in Vancouver. As a result, a vast majority of my relationships are mediated by technology and limited to what people tell me instead of what I see.
But it’s strange how we tell people stuff on the Internet. We announce it. We throw bits out. We photoshop our faces, our houses, our thighs. We edit our words. We show people our best. We overshare. (What is oversharing anyway? As if being too vulnerable, in our compulsively brave-faced culture, is a problem.)
When we draw away from our engagement online, we refocus our gaze at the world in front of us. We see our relationships, our dependencies, near and far.
Before I began my fast, I knew a handful of people on our street. Having little kids and a front yard swing helps with that. Though I had relationships with a number of neighbors, I relied on them little. We have most of the means to provide for our family and have access to services by phone and Internet. It’s easier to Google for a pizza place than ask for a recommendation. More socially acceptable to buy a shovel than borrow one.
But one day, during my fast, when I accidentally locked my baby and my phone inside the house, I had no choice but to reach out for help. Scanning the street in utter panic, I spotted a car in a driveway a few houses down. After a few good rounds of knocks, Renee came to the door dressed in her housecoat. As soon as I’d blurted out my predicament, she ushered my daughter and me inside. She made a quick call to a locksmith, gave my kid a juice box, and then gave me what I needed above all: a hug.
Twenty minutes later we were back in the house, the baby still asleep, and we were no worse for the wear. And while my daughter watched Sesame Street, I had my longest conversation with Renee to date, learning that she used to be a political speech writer before she began a second career in finance. My need drew me to my neighbor; she rose to the occasion, and through it we came to know each other.
This year especially, it’s important to find ways to connect with each other. But as The Joy of Missing Out reminds us, social media is not a one-size-fits-all for communication. This season, we want to remind you that there are many different ways to connect with those you love while still being apart. If you are interested in how to create a richer offline existence be sure to check out Christina Crook’s The Joy of Missing Out: Finding Balance in a Wired World
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About the Author:
Christina Crook is a wordsmith and communications professional whose poetry, essays and interviews on art, culture and technology have appeared in UPPERCASE , CBC.ca , Vancouver Magazine , Today’s Parent , MUSE , Geez , Faith Today and the Literary Review of Canada . In 2012 she disabled the data on her smartphone, turned off her email and said goodbye to the Internet for 31 days. This experience, chronicled as the project, Letters from a Luddite, garnered international media attention and fueled Christina’s passion for exploring the intersection of technology, relationships and joy.
