I was recently watching a video which issued a challenge: invest in personal relationships over virtual relationships. It stated that there is a difference between being alone and being lonely, and all too often, our obsession with virtual reality makes us more lonely (even though we're "connecting" with people).
I took this challenge to heart and trotted off to Facebook-land to purge my 'friend list'. Surely, I thought, the fewer 'Facebook friends' I have, the less time I'll spend wasting time on Facebook. So I clicked to my profile, then my friends list ... and friend-requested 3 people and accepted another request. Whoops.
Thinking I'd have more success on Twitter, I proceeded over there next. After wasting 10 minutes clicking links posted by the people I follow, I finally un-followed 13 people, wondering why I was following the CIA and "German translations" in the first place.
Feeling like a media failure for investing so much time in my virtual realities, I took a deep breath and deleted Facebook from my phone. Done. And then I came here to blog about it.
Where is the balance? I think one of the keys is to allow my time online to lead into better, deeper relationships with people in real life. I think this is one of the reasons that I find it so hard to delete 'friends' on Facebook- because I'm afraid that 'delete' will mean we'll never connect in real life again. The question, though, is this: if I haven't spoken to that high school classmate in 4 years or my previous RA in 3 years, even online, then what are the chances we'll reconnect now? And, with technology, couldn't we find each other anyway, if we wanted to?
There's no denying that media can be good, useful, even lead us closer to God. I can say with confidence that videos, blog posts, or Catholic images I've seen on the internet have inspired me to grow in my faith journey. It's when they promote distance or even prevent us from having a faith life altogether that it becomes problematic.
So, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go delete at least 5 Facebook friends. Baby steps, they say. And then I'm logging off and attending praise and worship. Tomorrow, the first thing I will do is say a prayer to my Creator, instead of logging on to Facebook. Slowly, I'll begin to reconnect with real people around me.
And I challenge you to do the same.
I took this challenge to heart and trotted off to Facebook-land to purge my 'friend list'. Surely, I thought, the fewer 'Facebook friends' I have, the less time I'll spend wasting time on Facebook. So I clicked to my profile, then my friends list ... and friend-requested 3 people and accepted another request. Whoops.
Thinking I'd have more success on Twitter, I proceeded over there next. After wasting 10 minutes clicking links posted by the people I follow, I finally un-followed 13 people, wondering why I was following the CIA and "German translations" in the first place.
Feeling like a media failure for investing so much time in my virtual realities, I took a deep breath and deleted Facebook from my phone. Done. And then I came here to blog about it.
Where is the balance? I think one of the keys is to allow my time online to lead into better, deeper relationships with people in real life. I think this is one of the reasons that I find it so hard to delete 'friends' on Facebook- because I'm afraid that 'delete' will mean we'll never connect in real life again. The question, though, is this: if I haven't spoken to that high school classmate in 4 years or my previous RA in 3 years, even online, then what are the chances we'll reconnect now? And, with technology, couldn't we find each other anyway, if we wanted to?
There's no denying that media can be good, useful, even lead us closer to God. I can say with confidence that videos, blog posts, or Catholic images I've seen on the internet have inspired me to grow in my faith journey. It's when they promote distance or even prevent us from having a faith life altogether that it becomes problematic.
So, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go delete at least 5 Facebook friends. Baby steps, they say. And then I'm logging off and attending praise and worship. Tomorrow, the first thing I will do is say a prayer to my Creator, instead of logging on to Facebook. Slowly, I'll begin to reconnect with real people around me.
And I challenge you to do the same.