Social interaction or unsubstantial closeness?

I do not hate technology. I have several friends that I keep in touch with via instant messaging and emails. My family lives all over and with emails, video chatting, and blogs we are able to be regular parts of each others’ lives. It is an excellent networking tool. I get most of my news online. All of my research is done online. And of course most important, Brett and I met online.

On the other hand, I can’t buy that our most meaningful relationships happen online. I pulled the following quotes from an article about recent changes on one such forum. Think about them. Is this the the type of society you want to live in? Does it offer true closeness? Or is it a vomit of information on the world with no discrimination about what is worth sharing? Does life need to be one big long customized commercial? (Emphasis added to all the quotes by me.)

Facebook believes that when people share within its system, without fretting about the data they generate, his company can deliver tangible benefits. People will become closer with each other, be able to express themselves, and generally participate in a community of friends and contacts more deeply and fruitfully than they could hope to do so in the physical world. It is an idealistic vision, but self-interest is involved as well. Facebook stores all the data that people share.

We’ll get closer by sharing every single passing thought? Our online relationships will be more deep than any we could have in the physical world?

Facebook is not so subtly doubling down on its ambitions to enable people to shed the pre-digital cloak of isolation and treat their life as a 24/7 reality show, broadcast to those in their social spheres.

My life is a reality show. It’s my reality. Technology has not changed that. If we spend all of our time watching the lives of others are we truly living our own lives?

[W]hile Google sees Circles mainly as a filter that enables users to maintain privacy, Facebook is using its close friends list as a launching pad for new applications that let people share within a tighter social circle.

What is so wrong with privacy?

[I]nstead of that brief conversation you used to get by scanning the previous version of the profile, visiting the profile will be the equivalent of going to a bar to have a long overdue five-hour soul exchange. “It’s that conversation where you play the jukebox till it runs out, the bar closes, and you walk about and say, ‘Man, that was really deep.’”

How about you just have those conversations IN REAL LIFE?

Visitors come by to learn about who you are in detail — it will almost be like being left alone in someone’s apartment and being able to check out their bookshelves, CD’s, refrigerator and even their pedometer.

How many people would you, in real life, leave alone in your place to go through all your belongings? If you wouldn’t do it in real life, why would you do it on the internet?

“You can really put a lot more of your life into Facebook,”  says Dave Morin. And all of that is information that Facebook will store and potentially make use of. “Our primary business model and it always will be, is advertising,” says Dan Rose, Facebook’s VP of Platforms and Partnerships. “Our platform makes Facebook more interesting so people spend more time on it, because I’m learning about my friends and I’m sharing things about myself and I’m discovering new things. And it also makes it possible for us to put an ad in front of you that’s likely to be interesting to you.”

Do you want someone else to have possession of your life? Do you really need to spend MORE time in a virtual world rather than an actual world?

Will users balk at all that information about them in the hands of a private company? Zuckerberg is used to that line of questioning, and clearly doesn’t think it’s interesting.

That is not the type of person I would trust with my life. But that’s exactly what he is asking people to do – trust him with their life. Trust him to share their life with others. Trust him to use their life for his benefit.

Contrast that with these words of an Apostle of God, Elder David A. Bednar, as published in the June 2010 Ensign magazine, “Things as They Really Are.”

A truth that really is and always will be is that the body and the spirit constitute our reality and identity. When body and spirit are inseparably connected, we can receive a fulness of joy; when they are separated, we cannot receive a fulness of joy (see D&C 93:33–34).

Which makes me wonder, if we’ve disconnected our virtual reality so far from our physical reality, is that true joy? Is that a true reality? The physical reality of our body is so important to our eternal progression and happiness.

The adversary attempts to influence us both to misuse our physical bodies and to minimize the importance of our bodies. These two methods of attack are important for us to recognize and to repel.

Satan is stopped in his progression because he does not have a body. By removing the physical body from reality and interactions with others, our progression is also halted.

You may now be asking yourself, “But, Brother Bednar, you began today by talking about the importance of a physical body in our eternal progression. Are you suggesting that video gaming and various types of computer-mediated communication can play a role in minimizing the importance of our physical bodies?” That is precisely what I am declaring.

In an online virtual world your physical body is not important. You can pretend it is whatever you want it to be rather than acknowledging what it actually is.

I raise an apostolic voice of warning about the potentially stifling, suffocating, suppressing, and constraining impact of some kinds of cyberspace interactions and experiences upon our souls.

Read that sentence again. It’s a good one. Stifling. Suffocating. Suppressing. Those are not words I would associate with a deep, meaningful relationship.

Please be careful of becoming so immersed and engrossed in pixels, texting, earbuds, twittering, online social networking, and potentially addictive uses of media and the Internet that you fail to recognize the importance of your physical body and miss the richness of person-to-person communication. Beware of digital displays and data in many forms of computer-mediated interaction that can displace the full range of physical capacity and experience.

Social media is addicting. Think for a minute about how often you check different sources to see if something new has shown up. How do you feel when you haven’t checked in a while?

To feel the warmth of a tender hug from an eternal companion or to see the sincerity in the eyes of another person as testimony is shared—all of these things experienced as they really are through the instrument of our physical body—could be sacrificed for a high-fidelity fantasy that has no lasting value.

Brett and I met online. We do a lot of communicating online. But if we had never met physically, if we had never seen each other, if we had never been in the same place together, we never would’ve gotten married. It would not have been a real relationship with lasting value.

Brothers and sisters, please understand. I am not suggesting all technology is inherently bad; it is not. Nor am I saying we should not use its many capabilities in appropriate ways to learn, to communicate, to lift and brighten lives, and to build and strengthen the Church; of course we should. But I am raising a warning voice that we should not squander and damage authentic relationships by obsessing over contrived ones.

Online forums will use every piece of information and time given. Yet you have the choice of how much information you provide. Just because there is a blank spot to fill in does not mean you have to. Just because there is yet another way to get tied down by it (apps, games, etc) does not mean you have to. We had the photographer we did at our wedding because she and I reconnected online after having known each other in real life before. I think that was an excellent use of technology. It was social networking. We interacted in other more real ways.

The technology itself is not bad. But it can be used for bad things. Is it always the best use of your time? Probably not always. For me I’ve decided I can check each forum once each day and the news twice a day, and that’s it. No more obsessing about what’s new. And in just three days it’s amazing how much I’ve done, including rearranging all the furniture in our bedroom.

Elder Bednar closes with two questions.

1. Does the use of various technologies and media invite or impede the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost in your life?
2. Does the time you spend using various technologies and media enlarge or restrict your capacity to live, to love, and to serve in meaningful ways?

Just last week Elder Ardern of the Quorum of the Seventy taught about being a proper steward of time and not letting the technical distractions of life keep us from what matters – A Time to Prepare.

The poor use of time is a close cousin of idleness. As we follow the command to “cease to be idle” (D&C 88:124), we must be sure that being busy also equates to being productive. For example, it is wonderful to have the means of instant communication quite literally at our fingertips, but let us be sure that we do not become compulsive fingertip communicators. I sense that some are trapped in a new time-consuming addiction—one that enslaves us to be constantly checking and sending social messages and thus giving the false impression of being busy and productive.

… How sad it would be if the phone and computer, with all their sophistication, drowned out the simplicity of sincere prayer to a loving Father in Heaven. Let us be as quick to kneel as we are to text.

… I urge each of us to take those things which rob us of precious time and determine to be their master, rather than allowing them through their addictive nature to be the master of us.

Seek real happiness. Be the master of technology rather than letting it master you. Take back your time and use it for the substantial rather than the unsubstantial.

Related: Unplugged – The follow up