tweeting

What are we teaching the younger generation?

What are we modeling for our kids?

 

… that appearance is everything?

… that sports stars and celebrities are life’s most admirable professions?

… that an ABC summer show entitled “Mistresses” is good television?

 

That’s the question:  what are we teaching them?

 

Are we teaching that Facebook status updates are authentic?  … that we’re truly, transparently representing who and how we are?  … that Facebook relationships are real relationships?

 

Or better yet — and where my head and heart have lined up this day — that Twitter & Co. count for legitimate dialogue?

 

As all Intramuralist readers know, communication is of utmost importance.  How we communicate makes all the difference in the world.  The Intramuralist believes that all subjects can be discussed — albeit not necessarily agreed upon — if the approach is respectful and prioritizes active listening.  That’s the mantra of this blog:  all opinions are welcome as long as the opinion expressed is respectful to those with whom you may disagree.  Only through respectful discussion, friends, is solution viable.

 

Yet continually in Washington and in our work place, we have very intelligent men and women who for some reason reserve the right to rhetorically slam their brother and sister when the moment is too tempting and ripe.  They arrogantly belittle and bemoan, forgoing even the feigning of listening.  One wonders why.  Why is this so hard to comprehend?  Why is this still so challenging for otherwise bright-minded people?

 

Look at what we’re teaching the younger generation.

 

As social media has exploded over the past half dozen years, we have allowed them to accept Twitter as a wise form of dialogue.  In fact, we have allowed them to believe that it even is dialogue.

 

Excuse me?

 

Dialogue is a conversation between 2 or more people.  To engage in dialogue means to converse or discuss in order to resolve a problem.

 

There is no dialogue on Twitter.  There is no conversation.  In fact, there is little conversation whatsoever in all of social media.

 

Twitter is simply a listing of one-liners where the Tweeter can tweet whatever he or she desires.  There is no eye contact.  There is no empathetic, compassionate, nor comprehending glance in that person’s direction.  There is no feeling; there is nothing warm nor cold.

 

Twitter is a list of comments — often snarky or satirical — in which one person attempts to manage the impression others have of them.  There is no respectful back-and-forth.  In fact, because it’s not actually dialogue, Twitter and the rest of social cyberspace often damage more relationships than they maintain or repair.

 

Friends, Twitter is not an evil within society.  Just like most things, a positive tool can be negatively employed.  The disservice we are allowing for the younger generation, however — as we tweet, too — is that social media is something it’s not… that Twitter and tweeting and even texting take the place of authentic, wise communication.

 

Respectfully… always…

AR