Fake Reality

We just took a fun trip to Disney and I'm going to post about it soon....but this subject has been on my mind lately to I'm going to talk about it instead. DISCLAIMER: I am guilty of most of the things I'm talking about, I use a blackberry for my phone and email, I surf Facebook, and I write on this blog. I guess I'm old school at heart, though, because I see how far technology has come and I don't really like it. I look around at kids, especially teenagers, and they are absorbed into their electronic device, usually with earplugs in which makes them completely out of touch with the world around them. I can't stand it. I'm not sure how I'm going to fight this with my kids, Sadie is less than a decade away until she's "old enough" for Facebook (I think you should be 40). All I know is I'm thankful that Facebook wasn't around when I was a teenager. At least the stupid things I said were passed around class on little pieces of paper and later thrown away, not posted on a news feed for 300+ people to read. My friend told me of a lady who quit Facebook because she says it was giving her a sense of closeness with her friends when she wasn't actually interacting with them at all. I have noticed that I do this, too. I scroll through the news feed for a couple minutes, once or twice a day, and feel like I've probably seen anything newsworthy in my friend's (and many other people's) lives....when actually I'm not connected to them at all, I have no idea what is really going on in their mind and heart. Who is going to put the really difficult stuff out there for everyone to see? If you do it's a little weird, honestly, because way too many people are reading it. We all put our best foot forward in front of others, everyone is guilty of this. Steven always laughs when the Christmas cards come out because if it's a family picture it is always the best picture of the wife...even if the husband looks like a goofball and the kid's aren't looking at the camera, because the wife is the one who picks out the picture and orders them. I am definitely guilty of saying "hey, I look pretty good in that picture, let's put that one on my profile so everyone will think that's how I always look." And of course the age-old fishing for compliments (Steven hates it when I do this), "do I look ok? do these pants make me look fat?", Facebook is the perfect place for this as well. As one of our friends wisely said to us last week "if your life looks great on Facebook you are most likely miserable." So, is there any worth in Facebook? I do like to read funny things from my friend's lives, see their pictures, read birth announcements, etc, so I'm not planning on quitting. I just want to remember to pick up the phone and talk to my friends, not just check their wall. I want my children to learn the value of face to face interaction and connecting with people through verbal communication. I do not want them lost in personal video game devices, cell phones, or i-pods, I want them climbing trees and reading books and talking to people, even if that means their friends are always here (probably making fun of them for their lack of technology). In order to teach this to my children I need to practice it myself...which means I'm going to get off this laptop and go have a conversation with my husband. And call 3 friends tomorrow. But first I need to post this to Facebook, ironically.....:)