Social Media And The Long-Form Life
Amidst all of our crazy technological innovations for maintaining connection and communication, I am consistently surprised by how much my wife knows about what is going on in the lives of friends and family without any use of social media. No Facebook, no Twitter, no Snapchat. Nada. Only a free email account, a dumb phone, and limited minutes of texts each month. Yet she consistently knows not only the details about what is going on in a friend’s life but why it is going on and what the particular friend thinks about it all.
Social media is essentially marketing and advertising. It’s funded by advertising and it encourages each of us to market our life to the world. The day-to-day details and routines of what we are each doing do not change all that much. I call this the “short-form life”, or the general routines that we all have, the jobs we go to, the habits we have created, the maintenance work we need to do each day. Social media is particularly designed to work within the short-form life. Occasionally the short-form life might have an event thrown in, such as skiing for the weekend or hosting a BBQ dinner. The short-form life is immediate and so the immediacy of access that social media allows, for advertising these events, unduly elevates these otherwise very ordinary sets of circumstances.
Long Form
My wife may not know what weekend trip someone posted about or who tweeted what, but she tends to know a lot more of the depth of what is going on in that individual’s life — the long-form life. The long-form life comes more slowly; it evolves over time and requires more and more thinking and preparation. Is an individual considering a new job or career? What about moving homes or out of state? What about caring for an elderly parent or trying a new hobby? What school should their kids go to and how are they preparing for that? One of their children is struggling; how are they dealing with the circumstances? These are questions that many of us face and the answers may not always be readily apparent. Hence, the need for perspective and feedback from trusted friends.
My wife is not a Luddite, but I would say that her use of digital technology is quite restrained. And this restraint does not seem to be onerous or oftentimes even conscious. For myself, such restraint would likely be a formulaic approach after much mental analysis; I would invariably write several polemic articles on it, decrying the profound waste of time, the non-value added activities, as well as the political and social implications of social media (wait, I already did; it was my college senior project for which I received a barely passing grade). For my wife I think it’s blessedly so much simpler: she is not interested in social media. It holds no intrinsic appeal. This is a fascinating concept. Her life has just carried right along with barely a nod to Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, or whatever software app is currently in Silicon Valley’s running pipeline. When she was put in charge of the social media marketing for a former employer we thought it outrageously funny and terribly ironic. She had to first figure out how to even sign up for these various media services, let alone utilize them effectively every day for her work.
What About Connections?
The elephant in the room: how does she stay connected with people? How does she know what is going on in their long-form life? She does the one thing that so many of us, with all of our connection and communication, often fail to do: she routinely meets people. I mean meets them face-to-face. For several hours at a time. Without checking or playing on a phone. She actually talks to the person — in person. It’s amazing. Hearing her stories of these interactions is like going on a mental, archeological trip into “The Land Before Time,” or in this instance, “The Land Before Social Media.” I am consistently amazed that at the end of each week my wife has typically met with at least one good friend, oftentimes several friends and acquaintances, and has arranged to meet more the following week. And unlike the majority of my own communication (90% of which is transactional and only occurs due to utility), her conversations do not necessarily have any agenda other than to spend time with the other person and hear what they have to say. What a refreshingly novel idea, to actually be interested in another human being and tell them so by showing up and paying attention to them.
Valuing Depth
There is a degree of depth that everyone agrees an in-person conversation provides, and which we have yet to be able to replicate in our myriad of communication technologies. We often discuss issues and items in our life to create a connection, but also to gather feedback and input from individuals whom we trust. Otherwise, what would be the point of conversation? This feedback and input are difficult to gather via social media, because the mediums lend themselves to short, shallow answers. There are so many nuances in a conversation that are achieved with body language, inflection, or tone. All of these can speak volumes about what is really being said, far more than merely the language words spoken or written. They convey the statement behind the statement or the question behind the question. In many ways, such intangible, inarticulate parts of a conversation truly make up the value elements of that particular conversation.
Either consciously or unconsciously, my wife has placed constraints on her use of technology as a communication tool and instead uses such technology, not as a medium, but as a means to arrange face-to-face conversations. The technology (email, text, and phone) is not the message; it is only the facilitating tool for the real engagement of later meeting in-person. I, for one, would do well to follow her example and spend more time actually paying attention to individuals in my community. It’s those connections and conversations that truly add value, depth, and joy to both our individual lives as well as our shared experiences.
Moving Forward:
• Have you been paying attention to your long-form life or the deeper end of the lives of friends or family?
• Do you make it a point to regularly meet in-person with members of your community?
Originally published at fjwriting.com on March 27, 2018.
