Do We Really Connect Through Social Media?

I was traveling with a friend recently who, while sitting next to me on an airplane, sighed and told me they were unfollowing somebody on social media. “You don’t like them?” I asked. That’s not it, my friend said. I love them in person. But on social media they’re so religious and always sharing little pithy quotes or pictures with their kids acting perfect. That’s not who they are at all. They’re normal. I just can’t take the posturing anymore.

We all likely have friends like that.

And we all project an image, to some degree, on social media.

For some, social media is a bullhorn for what they’re already doing—pretending to be people they really aren’t. It’s not just the religious. How many people do you follow whose pictures look like they’re coming back from the 1950’s, as though all the clothes and cars and hats came from another time? All captured by a smart phone invented last year.

It’s a strange world, for sure.

We get to be our own movie directors, our own magazine editors, putting out into the world something creative and hopefully inspiring. But at times, I wonder if all the projecting of an image isn’t costing us something. And that something is the ability to connect, for real. Impressing people is not the same as connecting with them.

If I project an image online, I feel like I have to keep it up in person, and that’s exhausting. I don’t usually look that good or have a Bible that handy.

I’m just a normal guy, honestly.

But I’ve found that by not projecting an image online, I get to be myself in person. Sure, people aren’t that impressed with me, but I get to have real conversations with real people and we get to really connect. My soul gets fed.

I read about a celebrity once who pursued fame, then got it, then found he couldn’t be himself in front of fans because they all wanted him to be the characters he’d played in movies. They all had an expectation of who he was and were let down by the real him. He said the one thing he never expected from global fame was complete isolation.

But that’s what it all led to.

I wonder if, in small percentages, that’s not what we’re doing to ourselves.

When my children pick up social media, and they almost certainly will, I want to teach them to project whatever is true, not a romanticized version of the truth. Why? Because I want them to connect.

Don’s new book about getting Scary Close releases in one week from today. You can order it now on Amazon and get it by next Tuesday. If you do pre-order, you get a free audio book of Blue Like Jazz! Just submit your receipt number at www.scaryclose.com.

Do We Really Connect Through Social Media? is a post from: Storyline Blog