Is social media and screen time weakening your marriage and relationships?
These days I talk with individuals and couples about the impact of their smartphones on their lives just as much more than pornography.
This a short spoken word poem on how social media and smartphones can affect our relationships and connection.
Here are a few podcasts that can help if you’re wanting a healthier relationship with your phone.
The Case For Digital Aestheticism
It’s Day Three of the Blog Like A Pro Challenge.
Today for Hump Day, I’m blogging about two things: Writing and the Fear of Missing Out.
Today’s challenge is tough for me because I don’t write to be controversial or take a stand or to provoke debate.
But I do have a lot of things I am passionate about. And I’ve been thinking about so many different things the past few days.
There’s actually quite a few things I fight for. These days it’s fear and stress, in myself and others.
I’m also dealing with what Brene Brown calls a “vulnerability hangover”, a pretty mean one after the last two days of blogging. (If you’re one of my new blogging friends maybe you relate?)
Before I jump into the Fear Of Missing Out, I want to share something from Day One’s blogging experience.
I broke through my Resistance and wrote a “manifesto” of sorts for the first day’s challenge.
I didn’t think it was awesome but was happy to start writing again after several months and put words out there again. And I was pleasantly surprised to write more than 500 words. It was actually kind of easy.
I thought: “I’ll just start writing and keep writing as if I stop writing I’ll never be able to start again.” And I started second guessing what I wrote and how it could be better and there’s so much more to stay.
And it hit me, as I ruminated past my bedtime:
“This is more Fear, more Resistance and Scarcity. It’s so ingrained in me to motivate myself this way.”
It reminded me of the story of the Israelites in the wilderness receiving manna from heaven daily and trying to hoard it.
My mind stopped racing and I was able to let go with this thought:
“Today’s Word, today’s words are enough. There’s more to say tomorrow. Today’s words are enough.”
§§§
Lately, I’ve been encouraging my overwhelmed patients to fight for permission to be valuable in their own life. To take care of themselves. So many of the people, most of them moms, I talk to during the week are so busy, so focused on the needs of others, their responsibilities and roles, that put themselves last on their to-do list. Some of them aren’t even on their to-list at all. And their physical and emotional lives suffer.
We are sick. Our country, our homes are soul sick.
My daughter taught me about FOMO recently, the Fear of Missing Out. It’s something that affects her off at college. There’s a constant tension she feels between getting her studies done and participating in fun campus activities. And she’s not the only one.
FOMO can hit young kids when the latest version of Minecraft comes out.
It plays out on our smartphones and tablets and on social media. In our jam packed calendars. It can even play out in our church activities and attendance; we can get caught up in busyness of going to events and meetings and studies, coffee, prayer meetings and worship services and appointments because we fear missing out on experiencing God in a new and exciting way.
If you’re like me it is a big part of why my nightstand is covered with a dozen unfinished books.
Even in this week’s Blog Like A Pro Challenge, FOMO is rearing it’s head. (Ugh! I don’t have my “lead magnet” ready. I’m not going to win the prize!)
It’s interesting how the Fear Of Missing Out drives us to miss out on what’s most important.
Being present
Our kids growing up
Our calling
Intimacy with our spouse
Time with God
Prayer and mindfulness
Contentment and peace
Today’s blog challenge is to pick a fight.
Guys, we’re losing our lives to our screens.
Every other day in coaching or counseling with patients, social media and Facebook come into the conversation and not for a positive reason.
There will be a day when folks that go to counseling will spend a good portion of it talking about how their parents were absent from them because of social media and smartphones .
We may already be there.
Certainly in 10 to 15 years we will have a generation of parents who have spent their entire conscious lives on smartphones and tablets.
The sad thing is kids won’t sit their parents down to have an intervention about their addiction because they’ll just turn to their own tablets and smartphones.
This is the fight I’m picking and encouraging you to fight.
Fight for your soul.
Fight for deep connection with your family.
Fight distraction.
Fight addiction.
Fight comparison and the voices of shame.
Fight to stop fighting and striving and consuming.
Fight to just rest, trust and just be.
You.
Your life.
The simple gifts God gives, are enough.
Because He has made it so.
And said that it is good.
§§§
See, when I started thinking about this my first “advice” was to replace the Fear of Missing Out on social media and concerts and going out with the Fear of Missing Out on your kids, on your life.
But this is was just like the first part of this blog, trying to change negative behavior with another negative.
The solution to FOMO is just like “Today’s words are enough”, it’s contentment and gratitude, that the present moments, the present company, our present reality is enough.
PS. I was home sick today. Thinking about this blog and came across this TED talk My year of saying yes to everything | Shonda Rhimes.
She is a mom who is winning the fight against FOMO.
It is amazing and I think may be my new favorite TED talk.
I hope it encourages you.
She climbs the steps of the extinct volcano and hurries down the path to find her special bench.
The view here overlooks Portland and she wishes he was here to share the beauty of it all.
She does this every day.
She watches the older couple who walk their dog and the young couple who still hold hands go by.
She hears a single pair of footsteps and turns with anticipation but it’s not him.
She feels her face get flush with shame as she reminds herself how silly it is to hope he’ll accidentally show up today.
That’s the only way it could happen, by accident.
Can it really be called waiting if she’s the only one who knows that she’s there?
Some days she hugs herself as the sun sets and the tears fall.
Some days she’s just numb.
She just sits fuming, mad at him for not meeting her here.
For leaving her alone.
But most of all she feels a hopeless anger at herself because she knows every day she sits here she is telling herself the pain of being alone is the cost of not feeling the pain of telling him about the bench, about the life she dreams about sharing with him, the pain of admitting she’s not ok, risking the invitation and him not showing up.
And she hates herself for being scared and for blaming him.
“Honey, I’m going to bed now.”
Shakes her from her reverie and she watches his back as he heads down the hall.
She reaches briefly for him but catches herself and the sob trying to escape her chest.
It’s not just from the regret of giving another evening to Netflix.
“He’s a good man. I know he loves me.” She reminds herself it’s just that the park was looking especially beautiful tonight for some reason.
Another opportunity lost to tell him about the bench she has set aside for them in her heart.
The first time I heard about this thing called “MySpace” was about 12 years ago.
It was when I first learned about social media.
(I also learned about twitter and podcasts from patients)
A client told me about MySpace being this site where bands write info about themselves, post music and interact with fans.
He was also constantly fighting his girlfriend about being on it. He was jealous of the time and jealous of the relationships she was building. She kept telling him he was being insecure, unreasonable and jealous; it was not a big deal. But it was, to him. And therefore, them.
So, from the first time I heard about social media it’s been associated with the damage it can do on relationships.
These days social media comes up in most sessions counseling and coaching sessions.
We were even introduced to an online tool for promoting and supporting healthy lifestyles (nutrition, physical activity, stress management) that emphasizes social media at Kaiser today.
I’ll be writing a lot about porn and sexual addiction here on the blog but I’ll also be writing about social media and it’s impact on relationships, childhood development and our emotional and spiritual health.
The way porn and social media are used are just symptoms, symptoms of the way we live, the things we are living and longing for, individually and as a society.
One of the most destructive things that porn teaches is to comfort yourself
in isolation.
To cope stress and escape from reality instead of being connected, to hide.
I think one of the most dangerous things about FB, social media and our phones/tablets that maybe make it even more destructive individually and to us as families is it allows us to hide in plain sight.
And while we may feel some level of shame to want to hide our addictions to things that are more “unacceptable…” from our kids, it’s becoming increasingly common and acceptable to neglect our children, friends and present company to escape to our screens.
And I don’t think it’s fair for us as parents to bemoan our kids spending too much time on video games or online when whenever they happen to put down their controller or phone and look over at us we are not available or present for them.
We are teaching them what life is about and how to live it by our examples.
And toddlers are smart enough to see what we are giving our lives to.
Sometimes when I’m driving home from counseling I write things in response to what I’ve heard.
Things I wish I could say to my clients.
Here’s a spoken word I wrote one night awhile ago on the loneliness and disconnection social media is creating and reinforcing in marriages:
There was a time when
you couldn’t keep your eyes
or your hands off of me
Now your eyes are reserved for that screen
your hands are devoted to that iPad
These days the only time I hear you laugh or see you smile
is to stupid videos on youTube
You give your best to strangers on your screen
These days the only thing I hear from you is your irritation and annoyance.
You give me, contempt
Where did we go wrong?
I stopped reaching out to you.
You didn’t notice.
I can’t handle your silent rejection
I swear I get so angry I just want to take a hammer
to that damn tablet
But I don’t
Because deep down inside
I’m afraid
I’m afraid that you’d be even more angry
Even more angry at
losing it
than the fact that you are losing me
What did I do to deserve this disdain?
I want to say all this to you
but you can’t be bothered
so I retreat to my iPhone
And wonder
Do you feel the same?