Alone Together

Today people can always be heard, can be wherever they want (virtually), and they never have to be alone. It is important for children to develope the capacity for solitude. People no longer know how to cope with being alone, they associate being alone with loneliness which are two different things. 

We are losing face with conversation; loss of eye contact. There's a desire to see to see who wants to reach us and to have a constant connection to everyone though use of a device. Leaving a phone out during a conversation can greatly change how involved the other person is making them feel like the person is waiting to be interrupted by their phone. "Conversation takes place in real time and you can't control what you're going to say" some teenagers don't like having face to face conversation because they feel less in control compared to text conversation where there's more time to think of their response. 

It is very important for children to learn how to be bored and alone without it being thought of a bad thing. We are in a time where being bored is no longer tolerated as refered in the video as the "boring bits". 

The video talks about creating device free places such as the kitchen, dining room, and car. Dinner with the family encourages good in a growing child. Being on a phone during this time takes you away from the dinner table. 

I think that if we stay on the same path that we are going then communication among humans with really suffer.

Measuring Selfworth

After watching the Louis C.K. feature in class I thought it could make a good blog topic. Social media and cell phones in general have changed the way we communicate with one and other. 

My generation was right at that age to be effected by this new technology. I remember wanting a cell phone in 7th grade because most of my friends had them. I didn't have a cell phone til 9th grade and couldn't text til my senior year. And even now kids are getting cell phones in elementary school. 

MySpace, Facebook, twitter and whatever social media comes next all have something in common. The users crave numbers. How many friends do they have. How many likes or retweets can they get on a post. People need that feeling of being recognized.

As Louis C.K. said, people hold a sadness inside and need to feel in contact with someone at all times. Social media has provided people the opportunity to communicate with a large group of people fairly easily. 

In my opinion social media has gotten out of control. How did our parents survive without? They seem fine. All this new technology is supposed to make everything easier but it seems to only cause more problems. Not even going into cyber bullying. 

This whole post became a sort of ramble of things to come to my head. But sometime this week I'm going to unplug myself from social media and have another post about how it went.