A Jerusalem Thought
Aug 19, 2011
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Last week the daughter of a friend of mine got engaged right before Shabbat. Years ago my daughter had been her counselor in camp, but I know they are not in touch. It took me a week to remember to send sent my daughter an email message: "did you hear that H got engaged? She answered by writing "Yes, I saw it". It me a split second to understand, but it meant that it had been posted on Facebook (among other social media sites)

I guess parents are no longer the messengers of personal information. I learned years ago that parents had lost status as the address for information.

It was made clear in a fascinating book by Neil Postman called "The Disappearance of Childhood". His claim was that since the printing press, and certainly since TV and access to the internet, parents and elders were no longer the main source of all knowledge and wisdom.

Adults used to control information and this established a gap between adulthood and childhood. Adults could provide information to children when they deemed it was appropriate to do so. With the growth of electronic media and the move into the information age, adults have somewhat lost their control over the information

My daughter told me something else. She has a friend that planned an announcement of her engagement because she wanted to tell people personally. She made a list of ten close friends and family to call immediately so they would hear from them and not Facebook.

That made me wonder if the spread of social media causing a loss of intimacy?

This past week there was an article in the NY Times by cultural consultant Neil GAbler titled "the elusive big idea". His point is that twitter and Facebook are conditioning people to think in sound bites or not to think at all. But that argument has been made for decades by those who believe TV and movies as compared to reading, make us more dependent on our vision and less on our thinking.

Intuitively I think we sense that social media are having an impact on our relationships in a way that TV and movies have not. The flood of personal information and messages is enormous. I'm sure parents of adolescents wonder what is happening. I I tried to find if there has been much written about its impact. Aside from the well-known concerns about loss of privacy, I found a couple of comments.

1 -Overestimate levels of intimacy - spending too much time on social media and not with the emotional nuances of body language' tone of voice or looking in the eyes, you can easily misjudge a message and confuse someone's fascination with writing with real intimacy

2 - Get emotionally dragged down - you need to choose wisely who you communicate with. If a lonely soul who is uncomfortable in public hooks on to you as a good person, you may be dragged down by the sad or low self -respect feeling they have.

3- Comparing self to others - there are a lot of peoplelisitng their accomplishments and one can quickly feel a little inadequate or too focused on what others are doing.

For me the most important issue is whether time is being lost in face to face interactions. . Are people, and young adults in particular, spending less intimate moments of sharing personal information, sharing values and sharing hopes for the future?
I hope not!

Dr Mann is a Clinical Psychologist and Business & Personal Coach, who helps parents, adults in transition, and solo business owners achieve positive goals. coachingauthentichappiness.com
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