What happens when the language of social media, rather than connecting us, leaves us without self-awareness, and disconnected from our fellow human beings?
Social media are, by nature, simply new channels of communication. Communication is about connection. Connection cannot be made by one individual unless that individual has cultivated a sense of self, a personal interior connection, and an ability to be present.
Busy-ness wipes out presence, tends to ditch interior self-awareness, and puts productivity over relationship. Productivity may be what many are looking for on the digital media horizon. But that productivity is a goal always out-of-reach if the reacher has lost his or her ability to reach — and connect — as a human being to a fellow human being.
Sherry Turkle, in a scintillating TED talk, sums up the social media language as a series of communicative “sips”. Doesn’t that all add up to one good gulp? she’s asked.
The answer is no.
The medium is the message, and if we sacrifice our commitment to meaningful connection and communication to the god of productivity — the quick-shot of Tweet-speak; the Facebook status meant to hook — we not only lose a part of ourselves, we lose the key ingredient that makes any social media interaction valuable. In the process, we lose-out on the monetary “value” (followers, ad revenue, business visibility) we’re so busy trying to produce.
“We can keep ourselves so busy, fill our lives with so many diversions, stuff our heads with so much knowledge, involve ourselves with so many people and cover so much ground that we never have time to probe the fearful and wonderful world within… By middle life most of us are accomplished fugitives from ourselves.
[…]
“The individual who has become a stranger to himself has lost the capacity for genuine self-renewal.”
This is from a book I’ve recently picked up. Concrete? Yes. Guide to social-media-know-how? No. Guide to being able to recognize and produce meaningful content, extend a valid and engaging message, understand yourself? Yes.
Gardener’s Self-Renewal touches on the precise pitfall of the medium of communication we use when utilizing Twitter, Facebook, or any other digital platform: it is the pitfall of “so much knowledge […] so many people […] so much ground” that by the time we’re finished, we’re not only strangers to ourselves, we’re strangers still to every single one of those individuals we’ve tweeted; FB’ed, and pinned or ‘grammed.
“… we’re so busy being productive that we neglect to be present,” says Brainpickings. (I love Brainpickings, by the way. Please, patronize them.)
So true.
And if anything, good business, good relationships — and good social media — are all based on presence. On our ability to nourish and engage in a relationship.
Sure, the medium is spat out in sips and sputters. But human beings don’t change by nature, however we talk. Look out for those who use it to create a whole and human message. Look out for tweets like these (that really get you thinking). For blogs like Brainpickings (that put body in the blog). For users that subvert the sip, and spin it out into sea.
Your business, your blog, your message will benefit. Better yet, your capacity to communicate — to engage in friendship and fellowship — will.
We’re talking to humans, folks. Be human.
Recommended reading:
Self Renewal by John Gardener
“Alone Together” transcript (TED talk) by Sherry Turkle
On the Shortness of Life by Seneca
C.J. Williams 