>Are Text Messages and Social Networking Harming Relationships?
>Remember when call waiting was considered ‘hang on, there might be someone else more important on the other line’ in terms of communication? Consider a few years ago what you did when you wanted to hang out with your best friend or family. Did you go see them only to spend your time together texting other people or playing on some social network paying more attention to someone else than the person you claimed to want to be with? The way technology has connected everyone is also the way technology is separating everyone. If you go to bed with your husband, wide, boyfriend, girlfriend or significant other and then instantly pickup your laptop or cell phone to make sure you let other people know you are thinking about them or worse yet respond to inquiries or requests from other people while you should be paying attention to YOUR life and your relationship then you have lost.
The point is that life is about who you want to spend it with and what is most important to you not what everyone else is doing. If you are compelled to spending every opportunity to check out what others are doing instead of trying to make your life, your family life, your relationships and your situation better than you have lost yourself to technology. Social Networking is key in the point of being ‘social’ in that you have to conduct yourself with respect, professionalism and communicate in the same fashion that you would in real life. If you met someone socially for dinner or drinks and then spent your entire time ignoring them while talking to other random people then would you consider that a good social relationship? Odds are you would say no, we like to be with people who want to be with US while most people would say someone who ignored them to ‘socialize’ with everyone else is someone nobody would want to be around.
This being the case why do people still feel the insane need to continue ignoring those they love and care about to text, email or respond to others? If someone is important to you then show them by giving them your undivided attention. What the person you met 3 weeks ago is doing for dinner is not more important than your relationship with your child, spouse or family. It’s time we woke up, grow up and decide who and what is most important in our lives then conduct ourselves accordingly. I am not advocating the demise of texting or social networking but I am advocating prioritizing it to keep what is important first…and I live and breathe technology!
Robert ‘Dot Com’ Jackson
