Anti-Social Media

Anti-Social Media. There. I said it. But while I knew the concept had merit, I didn’t realize just how much until a recent trip to Bountiful. Well, actually, it’s Kaysville, Utah, but it used to be Bountiful, and a trip to Bountiful is just so much more fun to say. And yes, this post has just become a travel log.

During a recent trip back to the homestead, I realized that my parents have been fighting technology – in the literal sense – for quite a while. Not because they don’t welcome it, but simply because they’re so busy being parents and grandparents and great-grandparents that it simply snuck up on them. One moment, something called WordPerfect (Google it) is making some neighbor in Provo a millionaire, and the next we’re talking micro-chips, identity theft, and mobile banking. And that’s just on their local news broadcast. But the conversations thrown around our family dinner table? Those truly raise my awareness of the anti-socialness (my blog post, my vocabulary) of social media.

In between “pass the salt” my parents listened in horror as three generations of family members conversed in a foreign tongue using mostly verbs like “Googled,” “friended,” “tweeted,” and “IM”d,” to name just a few. And then you throw “comments on my Facebook page", “are you following me on Twitter,” into the conversation, and you’re really heading for great generational communication – in which Grandma and Grandpa tend to be non-participants. Add to that mix the iPhones, iPods, Blackberries, and cell phones that none of us are ever without, and you’ve excluded them even more. How can something so beneficial be so alienating? So anti-social?

To overcome this digital divide, we bought Mom her own NetBook for her birthday. What better way to have immediate access to the family blogs, the grandkids’ personal email addresses, the Gmail chat features, the digital photo downloads – all right there at her finger tips! And being the generous woman she is – and always will be – she accepted it with gratitude and awe (and probably dozens of thoughts about how she was going to work that sucker). But to her credit, my mom hunkered down, dove into the password protection tutorials, the Gmail practice runs, the photo download and upload sessions, and even the Logitech Vid video phone capabilities, just for the experience of it all. Now THAT’S love! That’s true Grandma status if I’ve ever witnessed it.

To my family’s credit, the encouraging emails are pouring in. The over-the-phone tutorials are ongoing. The strategic grandson/tech wizard drive-bys continue. Will the constant advancement of technology and its uses continue to outpace Mom/Grandma/Great Grandma’s digital learning curve? Possibly. But who cares? Because we’re having some great fun catching up and reversing the Anti-Social Media trend, one trip to Bountiful – err, Kaysville – at a time.

Alan Newbold