Lonely in a Sea of People

            Awhile back I blogged about an amazing experience I had during a “dare2share” conference. It set a fire in my heart to evangelize to those around me. There is a world of people out there; we need to go get ‘em.

            But my post will not be on evangelism today. It will be on social media. I just got a Facebook today (yay!), so my mind went back to one of the messages Propaganda gave on this 21st century institution.

            Without bashing it, Propaganda talked about an interesting phenomena occurring. You see, we are lonelier now than ever. Just look at suicide rates along with all the other negative stats. But we are more “in-tune and up-to-date” with each others' lives than ever. How can this be the case?

            Propaganda answers by saying it’s because we often portray a fake persona online. We choose the photos that make us look the best. We only say the funniest or most profound things. We make ourselves look good.

            Then, when we log off, we go back to our real life. Where we make mistakes, have bad hair days, snap at those we love, and just botch things in general. But no one ever knows… because when we log back on we laugh it off, joke about it, vent about it (jokingly), ignore it, or dismiss it.

            But on the inside we yearn for someone to talk to honestly. Someone that can see us get truly sad or angry. Someone that can see the real, true us. We weren’t made to be screens or snapshots, but real people with real lives. You know, reality? What ever happened to it?

            As a culture, we spend hours a day on social media. We don’t get out and talk to one another. Face-to-face conversations are becoming extinct. I’ll go into a restaurant and I’ll see couples on their phones, completely ignoring each other. I’ll see parents on their phones while their kids are on theirs. And we wonder at the dysfunction.

            And we get lonely. No one sees us for how we are, but what we want to be. We want to be that comedian/athlete/perfect person/genius/model. Instead, we are just… us. We need to be more open.

            Now, I’m not on here to bash social media. I used to be that way, but I’ve seen that good can come from it. People don’t have time anymore for long phone conversations or to spend half a day at your house. But they do have time to upload a photo and a caption, letting people know what’s going on. You can keep up with friends when they move. You can let others know what’s going on around you.

            But for the sake of our sanity, we need to go outside of our screens and talk to people. Become vulnerable. Get real. Make a true friend or two.