Social Media and Cell Phones

I reflect uneasily and often on the culture my children are growing up in right now. I'm not talking about the big news stories, actually, which are issues enough to manage in themselves; I'm just talking about technology.

Technology can be a great blessing.  And yet it can also be a terrible distraction.

Lately I've been trying to puzzle this out.  My sister has been texting me a lot, so I feel I've been on my phone a ton, because I want to be available to her. (She just closed on her first-ever home on Friday!  I helped her with house-hunting, financing details, insurance coverage, inspection report, and a million other little details.)  She is unmarried, and so in many ways I'm her support person. ;) 

And then there's social media. Instagram. Facebook.  Those are the only two things I do, but that's enough, and some days I am tempted to just get rid of it all and see what life would look and feel like.  It's a double-edged sword: on the one hand, I like the connection it can provide.  On the other hand, sometimes the connection is pretty tenuous and superficial.  On the other hand again, sometimes the connection leads to genuine help and encouragement. 

And there's a dark underbelly of social media, too: the combination of negativity plus the distraction/addiction that it can provide.  (Facebook was designed to be addictive!)

I am the type of person who loves meaningful interactions and conversations.  Interestingly, my best friends, most of whom do not live locally (only a couple do), are not really my social media friends at all.  I just prefer in-person discussions, deeper connections.  I think most of us do, when we step back and think about it.

And always underlying my analysis of this is the reality that my children, with every second of every day, are getting older.  Finn is a teenager now!  Annie is nine and a half!  I wonder how much time I have spent of their childhood distracted--?  I only got a iphone 2 years ago (right before my husband's surgery, because I knew that I'd need fast and easy communication with multiple people), but lo, that is a distracting device.  Before that, I found myself easily distracted by my ipod and even the laptop!  I keep notifications off on my iphone, do not have the Facebook app, and have it always turned off (so I don't hear any bells or dings), but it's still extremely distracting.  

When you are in the room with someone and they are on their phone--texting, scrolling, etc.--it can be so annoying.  And I think for children in particular, this must be particularly annoying, when their parent is on the phone.  Sometimes I will say "just a moment while I reply to this text" and I KNOW I am doing something helpful (communicating with another person about something--often something important, but admittedly, sometimes not), but my child has no idea.  They are not part of that. I don't want my children to recall me as someone who was so easily distracted by her phone/laptop/etc.

So where does that leave us?

I need to begin to pray for guidance on this. 

(A few years ago our internet quit working, and I didn't have a cell phone. I took our laptop to the coffee shop to answer emails 1-2x per week, and it was the best couple of weeks EVER! I loved it!  I asked my husband if we could just not fix the internet, but he thought that was unrealistic--because, given our situation, it really is. But I loved it.)

I'd love to hear what anyone else thinks/does about this pervasive cultural issue that doesn't look like it's going away anytime soon. How do we balance the people in front of us with the people behind the screen, especially when the people in both scenarios mean something to us? And how do we manage social media?  Do I just pretend that I don't have internet except for twice a week?!

It's a challenge for sure.