Does Social Media Make Us Less Social?

As Taylor posted, Gifts to Give is offering a special free presentation Thursday night, April 2, dealing with children and social media.

The community conversation is scheduled for 6 pm at the Gifts to Give location in Acushnet, and will feature guest speakers discussing the dangers of social media if used incorrectly. But another big part of the conversation will be about whether or not social media, while making us more connected as a species than ever before, is also limiting our ability to actually socialize with one another in person.

Last Saturday morning, I spoke with Bob Branco, who organized the event, along with parent and present Maria Martin and Gifts to Give founder Jim Stevens about that very topic.

Today's children live in a world where people feel the need to post every single thought and feeling they have on either Facebook or Twitter, where they take constant "selfies" and post them to Instagram or share them via SnapChat, and it's no surprise that it leaves people feeling vulnerable and awkward when actually dealing with people one-on-one. When I was a kid, our world was no bigger than our own neighborhood. Now, children can have friends across the globe that are nothing more than a single swipe of a smartphone away, with whom they can and will share their innermost thoughts and feelings despite never having a face-to-face meeting. It's causing us to use the internet as a crutch. How many of us would rather text a person today rather than call them on the phone? Words on a screen can't convey the same feeling, the same emotion or cause the same connection as the human voice. But yet we continue to move toward better technology, and with that, move away from traditional communication.

That's why parents need to instill in their children a desire to maintain that human contact. Even if it's something as simple as suggesting your child FaceTime or Skype their friends as opposed to texting--just something to see that look in another person's face while communicating (and also making sure you monitor exactly who it is your child is connecting with).

Social media is a great thing, and it's here to stay. And so we are the ones that are on the forefront of making sure it is just another way of communicating, as opposed to the only one.