The Paradox of a Virtual Life

Some people love summertime because of the sunshine, the beach, and the flip-flop tans. Some people love it for the picnics, sweet corn, and warm evenings glittering with fireflies. I love summer because it has become the only time of year in which I can leave my phone turned off in the bottom of my suitcase for as long as I want to and nobody asks indignantly if I got their text message. I love it because for once, Facebook and email are a chore rather than a necessity. I love it because I don't have to sit in front of a computer screen when all I want is a good heart-to-heart.

Both this summer and last summer I worked at a Christian camp from June until August. For a blissful nine weeks, I lived almost completely technology-free.  You don't have time for gadgets when you're hiking up a mountain in the pouring rain, building sandcastles at the playground with kindergartners, spraying shaving cream on a crowd of gleefully squealing middle-school girls, or splashing through mud puddles to get to the dining hall in the middle of a downpour. Yes, I checked my Facebook and phone on the weekends... but it wasn't something I thought or even cared much about. Cleaning out my inbox, scanning notifications, and replying to texts became an afterthought. “Yeah, I should probably do that later,” I would tell myself on my weekends off, and sometimes I'd just conveniently forget. My summer was one of adventures, laughter, and conversation. As mid-August crept closer, the staff talked about dreading going back to “real life”, but I think we had it backwards because nothing could have been more real. Maybe we've simply forgotten what real life is supposed to be like.

I've been home for three weeks now... and I've found that without the constant interaction and face-to-face communication that defines camp life, I don't quite know what to do with myself. In three weeks, I have checked my Facebook account more than a dozen times a day and sent and received more text messages than my phone processed over the course of the entire summer. I hate feeling obligated to carry my cell phone and compelled to check my messages over and over again. I hate the fact that I've gone straight back to doing what I was so happy to be free of for three months. Most of all, I hate the fact that I could stop... and won't.

Last year at the beginning of October, I decided enough was enough and deactivated my Facebook account. My goal was to stay away from social networking until the new year. Then it turned into a month. Then, three and a half weeks later, I caved.  Much as I felt like I was cheating, it simply didn't seem practical, especially for those long-distance friendships in which Facebook was our only link.  However, I recently stumbled across an article in a year-old Newsweek magazine entitled “iCrazy: How Connection Addiction Is Rewiring Our Brains” and a video (on Facebook, of all places) that got the wheels turning again.

Shimi Cohen, creator of the four-minute video entitled “The Innovation of Loneliness”, describes with simple clarity why social networking has become such a crutch in our lives. “We're collecting friends like stamps, not distinguishing quantity versus quality, and converting the deep meaning and intimacy of friendship with exchanging photos and chat conversations. By doing so, we're sacrificing conversation for mere connection, and so a paradoxical situation is created in which we claim to have many friends while actually being lonely.” You can watch the video here: The Innovation of Loneliness

It's beautifully stated.  In a society that glorifies the individual, we've become addicted to affirmation and the reassurance that we'll never have to be alone, yet we're lonelier than ever.  We spend time crafting the perfect virtual self and surrounding ourselves in a bubble of virtual friends so that we'll never have to feel the ache of loneliness, but we're only fooling ourselves.

The media and social networking has a place in our lives whether we like it or not.  Regardless, I don't want to settle for connection over conversation.  I don't want to settle for anything less than REAL.  I don't want something that was intended to be a tool to become a lifestyle. Cohen said it perfectly: “We slip into thinking that always being connected is going to make us feel less alone. But we are at risk, because the opposite is true. If we are not able to be alone, we're only going to know how to be lonely.”