“Social media can be a great venue for sharing those vacation photos and pet videos. It’s not the ideal medium for most debates, especially political ones, though. Problems arise when our time spent on social media, regardless of its purpose, comes in lieu of conversation.”
from Leaving the Screen: Restoring in-person relationships
I enjoy Facebook…no actually I enjoy it too much.
In the last four days Facebook was used to:
- Obtain 23 Netflix suggestions
- Seven books I must read in 2017
- And many suggestions for helping a sore throat
Messaging back and forth with a friend yesterday using the reply button it honestly felt like we were having a conversation on Facebook.
There’s just one problem with that…
Facebook isn’t a real conversation
In a convicting article yesterday Sean Martin made a strong case for conversation instead of Facebook:
“We need conversation more than ever when the discourse becomes complex and emotional, as it has today.”
2016 has given us many opportunities for “emotional conversations”
- About discussions about the presidential election
- Bathroom laws and other changes
- Racial injustice
- Immigration
- Terrorism
- And Our relationship with the LGBT community
The majority of these conversations took place online which allowed lots of people to get involved, but these “conversations” almost always turned into personal attacks on the other people or their opinion.
It’s my personal belief these attacking conversations took place because we couldn’t actually SEE the other person.
“Digital conversation reduces our capacity for empathy, an important emotion when engaged in passionate and polarized debate. We can’t see online how our words impact another person. It’s much easier to discern in a face-to-face discussion.
There are conversations that we should have online (like what to add to our Netflix list, or reading list) but then there are the emotional conversations that must be done face to face.
I’ve included my list of emotional conversations above, but it definitely isn’t extensive, so help me out but filling in the blank below
We should never discuss _______________ on Facebook
Johnhwilburn.org 