We joke that my mom is her own notification system, repeating nearly every facebook notification she receives out loud to us, as if we don't see it on our own news feed. Her posts, our posts, other people's posts. We've mentioned that we get the little red flags on our homepage too, but we still get a verbal update. Updates of good things, like pictures of cousins and relatives some of us haven't seen since 2005. Updates that my mom gets via messages from my aunts, or connections she makes to church friends. Still, inwardly I beg: Please, in moderation.
For someone who loves love in the form of undivided attention, the forever connection my parents have to their iPhone or iPad is annoying at best, painful at worst. At times it seems like the perfectly cooked family dinner cools for five minutes as my mom insists on arranging everything for the perfect photo (I admit I do this as a photographer, but I like to think I do it with more speed). As my mom takes great care to arrange the colors of fresh veggies and toppings on our next bowl of noodles, it feels as if it's given up its purpose as a lovingly prepared meal from mother to family, and instead must now be perfectly beautiful so it can be presented to the cyber world. I can't always tell if we'e arranging a nice centerpiece on the table just so we'll enjoy the meal or for the sake of the facebook photo looking nice. At some point during Christmas dinner, I actually put away my mom's iPhone by the microwave, away from her reach (don't ask me how I had the gall to do that to my mom), away from the distraction of thinking of a witty caption, coupled with the perfect English translation courtesy of her children. Of course, later that evening, she spent thirty minutes arranging and rearranging all the presents, taking fifty shots of the tree, and asking me to help her pick which ones to post on facebook. It feels like it's always about facebook.
I feel like there's a portion of us who know the importance of unplugging, of detoxing from social media. Yet that appeal has not been made to my parents, maybe because their generation is not typically addicted to internet and the social media. So for what reason will I ask my mom to stop talking about everything that's happening on facebook? And is what she does that much worse that the times I spend endlessly clicking through pages and pictures and posts, or only that hers is publicized?
Is there a source to blame? Sometimes it feels like we as children have contributed to this. Since we got ourselves online in middle school and high school, our families have lost us to anything from Neopets, to AIM, to xanga, to facebook. And when we're not on our computers, the four of us are running around, always busy, always talking quickly in a language that is still foreign to our parents. Talking to each other, saving stories for the brother or the sister and not for our parents. So they're left out of the loop, and while conversations stay busy among the kids, I guess my mom feels like he next resort is what' happening on the newsfeed and red flags.
Can habits change as an adult family? Can I stand it if habits don't change? It's realizations like this that make me crave the high priority of family time Darrell's parents have. Family vacations every year. Family game nights. We haven't even had a family movie night this Christmas, though my being gone for a whole week didn't help. But where do we start? Where do I start? Instead of pointing my finger at mom for always being on her iPhone, where can I close my laptop and do something with her instead? I just remembered I was supposed to bake with her when I got back from St. Louis. That was before the stomach flu...
_______________________________________So, if I show them that when we take a hike in the woods and see something lovely, we can’t just look at it and breathe it in and marvel at it together – but that it instantly needs to be captured and shared with people other than the ones right in front of me, it’s sort of saying that they are not enough. That moment was not enough. It needed to be highly regarded by others for it to really count.
- This quote comes from a fantastic Dear John style letter included in the latest edition of Taproot magazine, one in which the author Leslie Gilman informs Facebook that, despite all the enjoyment she gets from their ‘relationship’, it needs to end. The cost is too high.
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