Disclaimer: This post is not directed at any one person or even group of real people. If anyone from the lunch room is reading this, I am not referring to you. I enjoy our lunch time chats tremendously. This is simply a rant and a lashing out at forces that may or may not exist. There is an obviously a flip-side to these thoughts, one which I tried to articulate later in the comments.
Face to face relationship are overrated. Yup I said it! I am sick and tired of everyone placing so much value on the real world and face-to-face connections. I am tired of being forced to believe that just because I have to deal with people in a physical space that subsequently the connections and relationships I form are more genuine and authentic than the relationships I create online. Have you ever noticed that it is usually people who have never made strong bonds with people online, who bemoan the fact that we are somehow losing our humanity, simply because we no longer have to suffer through small talk and chit chat.
“Kids are losing social skills because they are connected to their screens.” They cry. Really? And what social skills are we talking about exactly? I am tired of pretending that the pre-screen generation had somehow mastered social etiquette, just because they weren’t distracted by these pesky screens.
“Do you ever talk to real people in the real world?” I want to ask. They are often scary. They come in all shapes and sizes. They crowd your space. They spit when they talk. They say the weirdest things and fidget uncomfortably when they realize they have little in common with you. Their eyes dart back and forth nervously as they lie. They pretend to be people they are not. They wear masks. Oh yeah and they are sitting right in front of you. So what? The fact that they grew up without screens does not make them any less annoying or awkward than the generation of kids growing up today.
We are collectively suffering from Golden Age syndrome. We are fooling ourselves into believing that just because we didn’t have screens, we raised generations of people free of angst and social awkwardness. Correct me if I am wrong, but even as we sat around campfires singing Kumbaya, the world was still filled with rape and murder and dishonesty and general disregard of social skills. The lack of screens is not what will bring people together and help us build communities. It is not Grand Theft Auto or the fact that junior is on the phone during dinner that will somehow create world peace.
Social skills, the generic term we throw about which I assume means the ability to authentically and effectively communicate ones thoughts, charm, wit, and humor, the ability to look people in the eyes and show respect, have little to do with a person’s ability to look away from a screen for five minutes. It has everything to do with how we parent, educate or govern. Building sustainable, peaceful, socially skilled communities is about the verbs we choose to focus on….not the one noun (Screens)
While it is unfair to romanticize the past, it is also dishonest to vilify the present. I am tired of people thinking that when I am looking at my screen, I am mindlessly entering some bizarre world where my mind is made numb and that I become a zombie. The opposite is actually true: Most of the time, when I am staring at my screen, I am creating! I may be editing a photograph that reflects a certain shade of my soul that no chit-chat in the lunch room will ever touch. I might be recording sounds to add to a digital story about a poem I wrote. I am most likely chatting with friends on different continent about things that matter to me, instead of nodding my head mindlessly as you prattle on about some topic that I have been forced to sit through just because we are in the same room. You want me to look away from the screen? Be more interesting!
Are you mad enough yet? Have I rubbed you the wrong way? Are you bursting with a bundle of refutations? Good. That was the point. Hyperbolic and instigative? Of course. I know there is value in face-to-face connections. Of course there is a visceral element of life that no screen will ever touch, but I am here to say that we can no longer romanticize the pre-screen past or vilify our current experience.
It is not fair for us to assume that our students are disconnect morons, who will drool at the next dinner party we force them to sit through, hoping they will impress our friends with their social skills. I remember being ten years old and curling up in the corner of my uncle’s house for hours with one of these:
cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by unloveablesteve
Why? Because I was ten years old and social skills were not my priority. How about we teach kids when and how to put the screen down, instead of devaluing what they do when they are on the screen. How about we share with them the things about the real world that will help them shine. How about we show them how to merge the two worlds. How about we help them learn to express themselves in ways that absorb others. There are hybrid worlds that exist between tech and the real world:
cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by giulia.forsythe
That is where I want to play. I for one am choosing not to insult my students when they use tools I do not understand. I will ask them to show me. Explain to me what they are doing? Why they are doing it? I will offer them vistas beyond the screen, but I will not devalue how they socialize or connect or create, simply because it is not the way I did it. How about we stop referring to screens as an ailment to be cured and start looking at how they fit into our lives- All of our lives! You might be surprised at what we find.
One of the things I learned in doing Living Facebook was that the “real world” is often more pleasant, more shallow and more fake than that of social media. And yet, the physical space, when treated a little more like social media, became more interesting. A butcher dropped his rehearsed lines when I asked him how to cook unicorn meat. The baristas at Starbucks became more social and more personal when I friended them and made a conscious effort to say, “I like what you said.”
I went into it thinking that it would prove just how much we’re missing the F2F relationships and instead came to the conclusion that we ought to be more like our Twitter and Facebook selves when we go to the library or the coffee shop or church or school.
I love this idea of bringing our deeper critical personae (Apparently this is the plural of persona) to real life. Pushing people into places they may not want to go in terms of conversations. I may give this a go. Thanks.
In most classrooms, the alternative to students being engaged with technology is their sitting and listening to their teacher. Between online social networking and sitting and listening quietly to an adult, it seems online social networking wins hands down at increasing social skills.
Of course, a perfect world would include a mix of both online networking and in class collaborating. Every classroom I’ve visited with a one-to-one or one-to-two laptop program has more social interaction going on than typical classrooms because students are constantly sharing, helping, and encouraging each other.
I see value in deep conversations, face to face discussion, and a well told story or even lecture, but I think don’t think it is fair to assume that kids would pay more attention or be more engaged simply by removing screens. I did not have a computer in front of me when I was in school, but I doodled my way through many a chemistry lecture.
We need engaging student centered classrooms, with or without screens.
It’s either a dichotomy or it’s not 😉 We seem drawn to putting complex concepts into simple boxes; I could not agree more that the distinctions are when we go online we leave ourselves, and vice versa:
http://cogdogblog.com/2011/09/05/the-vague-line/
It was Claudia Ceraso’s words that reversed things and moved me (a colleague I have known for years and never met)
“Let me ask you once again: Who are you when you write online?”
“Think of it conversely. The offline-only people in your lives who have never ever cared to read what you passionately write about, who do they actually know?”
Great post Alan. Thanks for articulating what I have been feeling for a while.
Woah. Mind officially blown.
#Jabizus, you and I have talked about this sort of stuff before, and I appreciate you articulating it with such fervor!
@cogdog, Claudia Ceraso’s words about offline-only friends is the thing that really woke me up today! It’s like offline-only friends know a part of me, but not the whole. Of course the reverse is likely to be true too, however.
I think it shouldn’t be a case of either offline or face-to-face interactions, but perhaps having an awareness that both types of interactions have value and can help us learn.
I agree a lot of this is old hat, and I also agree that no one really knows who we are, but that is also true of even the people closest to us. People can only know us by what we share, whether in intimate personal secrets or online confessionals.
The choice of being known, ultimately is ours. Physical space or online life makes little difference to our identity creation.
Wow, it is evident from your posts on twitte after this blog posting that you opened up Pandora’s box for someone. Nevertheless, I think your post is very well articulated and accurate. For some, it is a matter of trust. I have never met you face-to-face. Yet, through your blog’s and tweets I feel I know you better than some of my face-to-face friends that come to my house and garner more time that I dedicate to some of my online relationships. In my humble opinion, there are groups of people that are still fearful of the online world and don’t see these realtionships as genuine or real. I would argue otherwise.
Thanks for your fearless posting!
Craig
I’d go a step further, though, Keri-Lee: Like @cogdog says in his post — so you might act/do/be differently at the coffee shop than you are in the library… it’s contextual. So while my offline-only friends might only know a “part” of me and not the “whole,” by @cogdog’s argument I’d say that very few people (actually, maybe nobody!) knows the “whole” me… because they aren’t seeing me in every possible context that I exist in, or have existed in.
I’m thinking about this in very concrete terms at the moment — my classmates in grad school saw a very different part of me than most of my teaching colleagues do. And that’s to be expected, because the contexts are different. I’m me in all of these contexts, of course. But as Jabiz emphatically points out, all these contexts fit into all our lives.
… or not.
Some people never enter the library. Or the coffee shop. Or Twitter. So for them that context — and what happens within it — has no relevance. However, that doesn’t make the context any less authentic for those who do enter it. 🙂 … which I think is what the whole point is, right?
@Adrienne, Urgh, I sent a message to Jabiz today saying I don’t think I articulated myself very well, but the time to explain what I was meaning in written form is more than I have to spend right now!
Of course I agree with what you’ve said. I have typed and deleted this about 6 times already. Know what? I think I’ll just call you up and have a chat about it sometime instead. After all, you are one of my cross-over friends, which I think is pretty #rad!
I admit this post began as a tongue in cheek commentary on the shaking of heads, and the “kid’s these days” remarks we all make, as we watch a group of young people lost in a world of screens.
It was born of frustration and yes, a bit of anger, but I never wanted it to be take too seriously. Like most of you, I am terrified of screen time too. As the father of a 5 and half a year old and a two yr old, who now screams whenever we say no after she asks with the most earnest face, “iPad?” I am scared too. I don’t know what to do. I am fully aware by the amount of time I am on a screen in front of my kids, and how many times a day, I say one second sweet heart, let me just do (x) or (Y) and I appear to be giving more attention to my screen that my own children.
I too am annoyed when I watch families sitting at restaurants each on a device, no one talking. The other day, I saw a father and daughter, girl was 8ish and the dad was on his phone the whole time. Here they were on this cool little date and he was not present. I get it.
I guess, maybe I have hit the nail on the head here- it is not about real or virtual. It is not about screens. It is about being present. It is about learning when and how to be present when we need to be and how to go elsewhere when we need.
As an adult, I am just now learning. Anyway, I am rambling now. I just wanted to state that I am not advocating a full time screen world. I just want us to think critically about the effects of these tools before we make rash proclamations.
Jabiz:
“Its about being present”. Exactly.
(soon to appear in a quote in the follow-up paper we are writing on Emergent Learning : “Footprints of Emergence: topologies of learning” – the earlier paper is in IRRODL 2011).
Great Post. The Taboo (this one at least) is dead!
The thing is, presence just got so much more elastic (http://recherche-d-une-presence.blogspot.com/search?q=cellular+life+version+%232), and fun.
See also David White’s (related) stuff on ‘digital visitors and digital residents’ (http://tallblog.conted.ox.ac.uk/index.php/2009/10/14/visitors-residents-the-video/).
and if you’re interested in ‘slow days’: (http://recherche-d-une-presence.blogspot.com/search?q=slow+day)
Pingback: A Day in the Life- The Making of Time | Intrepid Teacher
Ah, late to the party as ever. But it never stops me from adding my $0.02 worth!
I have often said that one of the draws to Twitter for me is the ability to have the conversation that I want to have with the people with whom I want to have it. I’m not limited to the people that happen to be in the same room as me. My ability to connect with people across the globe does not devalue my face-to-face relationships. Truth be told, if I’m choosing to converse with somebody online over somebody in the same location as me, I probably wouldn’t choose to converse with that person in the same location as me even if there were no other options! [Okay, that might be a bit harsh but…]
To expand on what Jabiz said in the comments, this discussion, to me, is about being present, being authentic, and being respectful in one’s interactions, whether f2f or online. I think if I can do that, and get others to do that with me, then we can move beyond the value judgments and focus on the underlying relationships.
The depth of conversation that follows an engaging post, demonstrates a significant difference between online learning communities and the staffroom. The range of topics discussed in the face-to-face world draws conversationalists from those in the immediate area who might rather talk about the day’s news or the mundane topic of the day, rather then engaging in the discussion of richer, deeper, topics.
The ideas considered online can be tightly focused, and very deep when the audience arrives out of personal interest rather than because they were in the room. Posts like this draw thinkers who arrive like moths drawn by a flame.
It’s funny. I was at a PYP Exhibition kick-off tonight and there’s a big push for Twitter use with the (shameless plug) #nistexhibition hashtag as the key to keeping informed. As a facilitator, it was my job to tweet some ideas that students and parents put forth during their discussions to help promote all the ideas via a main screen twitterfall. I’ll be honest, I find it amazing that you, Jabiz, can tweet and teach at the same time because, while I love the Twittersphere and understand and appreciate what it has to offer, I find a huge disconnect when I try to tweet in the middle of things happening. I feel like I disengage from the moment, for a moment, while I post a tweet and things lose momentum. Moreso when I’m part of the conversation but even when I’m not, I feel like I’m missing part of the conversation and not giving people their due respect. How, in your opinion, do you keep that balance?
I am glad that I took the time to read through the full set of comments on this post as I feel that I got the full story that way, but there is still something missing… Rod Lucier said, “audience arrives out of personal interest,” which I think is highlighted by the comments posted here. Of course we are all going to agree with your post AND your fears, Jabiz, we are the moths drawn to the flame. I wonder if there are any valid arguments against any screen time or against any online social interactions. I know that we will not hear them here in this online world.
In defending our use of technology, I am constantly trying to divert attention away from the tools and on to the behaviours themselves. I think you hit the nail on the head with the point about being present, no matter where you are. I would like to try to extrapolate on that point. Some would argue that you can be present in your face to face and you can be fully present in your online life, but I would argue that you can not do both at the same time. (e.g. i can fully participate in a workshop and take notes via twitter, but I can not participate in a discussion and read my twitter.) Probably a simple distinction, but wanted to articulate it.
Hey Jay,
Thanks for your comment. Been thinking about that actually, and I agree it is hard to be fully presented when mixing f2f with online connections, but it doesn’t have to be:
http://www.jabizraisdana.com/blog/2012/03/tweeting-during-class-no-way/
The key is being aware of where your attention is.
I haven’t read your post fully, but I will after my classes. I came across this TEDx talk that is relevant to your post. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtLVCpZIiNs&feature=player_embedded I appreciate your honesty when you write–it’s refreshing. A big hello from Doha. 🙂
Pingback: Digital Video « themoravation