Through social media, I can update a list of random friends and followers with my location, whether they or I care or not. On some sites, I am limited to 140-character briefings on life, love, and the pursuit of the current five seconds. I could forgo challenging forays into the lives of people with the simple click of a button, as a fellow Twitter user succinctly summed up:
If the Facebook “like” button existed in real life I’d never have to hold a conversation.
Social media makes us anti-social, sometimes. We get an easy out. We can send a message that reads {{hug}} instead of having to actually give one. At best, it gives us a quick way to let someone know that we are thinking about them, which is of value I will admit.
Unfortunately, I’m a high demander of time from people.
It’s the only currency I trust on this earth.
Time is the precious thing of value. Someone who has invested time in me has my attention and a growing loyalty. I want to give them some of my time in return. There is no extra time floating about; we all get the same amount and are forced to use it. How we spend our time tells us, whether we’d like to admit it or not, what the most important thing is in our life.
Social media has become valuable for me only in the way it lets me stay in contact with people I already know. That is, people who really are in my life, people I have seen and can see. People who meet with me for fun or when one of us is in duress. Beyond that, the whole social thing online becomes a game of when and to whom I should sign in as invisible, or noticing who is online who isn’t chatting with me.
There are a few exceptions; some people I’ve met online have become pen pals and friends and confidants, and somehow translated the quickly vanishing bits and bytes into things that denote time. A letter or a card, maybe, like the one I found in my post office box today.
Everything changes: I get older, the world spins faster, and technology has us splitting and quartering our time even more, telling us we’re saving it instead. That we’re making more friends instead. That which lets me easily work in the currency of quantity, but not necessarily quality, is not enough. That which can be sold for advertising is not enough. That which leaves me alone when the power goes out and the batteries die is not enough. It is mainly empty and is not timeless.
Nothing changes: There will never be a replacement for one person spending time on another.
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