Over the next few weeks, I want to go into some of the issues concerning our digital lives. For the sake of my less contemporary sisters, I’m going to go into to this topic slowly, so if you don’t think of yourself as tech-savvy, this is the perfect place for you to start.
There was a world before Google, but every day lands me further away from what that world was like. The initial days of the Internet were shrouded in anonymity and most people approached it cautiously. Static pages were available for free, encouraging people to publish all kinds of useful (and useless) information. Then came chat. In high school, I failed business keyboarding (also called typing). Within weeks of discovering Internet Relay Chat, I could type quickly and efficiently, albeit by my own rules. The desire to communicate was so strong, I found a way to memorize the keyboard and make typing work for me.
The Internet was a place for fun and adventure. I could be anyone and no one, I could share as much or as little as I wanted to, I could invent new identities and lives. One of the most noticeable changes between then and now is that now there is no difference between our online lives and our realities. Real life has merged with virtual life, and together, create an online version of your real life. Except, it’s not entirely real. It’s edited. Controlled. It allows us to carefully construct our identities in a way where people see what we want them to see. In a future post, we will talk more about identity, but today I want to focus on how communication has changed.
Young people who have never known a world offline are on a strange bridge. On one hand, they are smart and savvy, not easily fooled and critical thinkers. On the other, they have problems maintaining personal relationships and connecting to other human beings. It is easier for some people to share intimate details with strangers online than to talk face to face with loved ones. Online friends and forums offer support, but cannot substitute what real life relationships provide. We tend to communicate easily through text messages and emails, allowing ourselves time to compose ourselves in the delay. Real life conversations are “live” or in “real time”, and require thinking on your feet. There is no time to think of comebacks or to dwell on words. In fact, when we have time to dwell on emails and other traces of communication, when we read and reread and reread, miscommunication surfaces. Tones and undertones emerge. We are upset and now we have PROOF.
Let me come right to the point: social skills need to be practised if they are to be developed and maintained. Increasingly, people are losing their ability to relate to each other. Increasingly, they never develop those skills at all and then are unleashed in the working world.
Communicating via text messaging and emails creates distance. This distance is confusing in light of emotions. Sometimes the words used to convey emotion border on hyperbole; other times, emotion is perceived too lightly. This is dangerous- one must always remember you are dealing with real people on the other end of the screen.
Sisters- I am praying for our introverted friends. Already these people are on the fringes and are exhausted by the thought of having to communicate and deal with people… digital life may make it easier for them to navigate through this world, but it isn’t helping them push past the comfort zone into a place of learning. I’m not suggesting that they have to be something they are not, but the risks of isolation are real for these folks.
Isolation is what the enemy wants to use to trap you. People who spend too much time alone become strange and stressed out in social situations. They may read situations wrong and then it’s easier for the mind to play tricks on them. The power of social media revolves around acceptance and rejection.
At the crux of this is rejection; we do not want to be rejected. We want to present polished versions of ourselves online, so people can see our best side. We take selfie after selfie, sometimes tilting the camera above to make our cheeks look slimmer or our chin more pronounced. We tell of all the fabulous things that are happening to us- where we are going, what we are eating, who we are with… but are we really WITH people anymore? Are we enjoying our real life relationships or just posing for group photos to make us look better to ourselves? We collect friendship in numbers and in “likes”. We are becoming expert fakes at real life, and in truth, all of these practices increase our fears that we are not worthy and will be rejected.
Stay with me- rejection comes with negative spirits. It creates trauma and hurts your soul. These negative spirits can then deposit in those hurt places and wreak havoc on our lives. They can create negative self-talk that causes you to react in a way that you wouldn’t otherwise choose to react.
In this day and age, we must look towards the Bible to reinforce our identity in Christ. I want to start this conversation with you about how digital life is impacting our walk with God. In the comments, tell me what kinds of topics you want to cover in this series and please email your questions to secretsfromursister@gmail.com .