Real Conversations!

This has gone on for years but I guess I'm just now realizing its significance and impact. People seem to be trying to have conversations on social media. And by conversations, I mean, long, deep, emotionally driven conversations as though the person receiving your message will suddenly realize the err of their ways and convert to your point.

I hope this is not terribly surprising, but this does not work! If anything, it adds to the hostility, division and tension that I wrote about last week.

So I thought I would share a few thoughts on this topic.

I have been blessed over the years to spend a decent amount of time in West Africa. The West African people are some of the smartest, most kind, caring and compassionate people I have ever met. One of the things that I have learned to appreciate is how much of their culture is based on oral traditions. They can sit and talk for hours while sharing opinions, stories of history and will even argue (and I've seen some pretty heated discussions) but at the end of the day, they walk away with respect for one another and better off for it.

I remember several years ago when one of the girls was in the middle of some form of high school drama with a good friend. There was texting going back and forth and I could tell that things were escalating and getting out of hand. I don’t even remember the subject of the ”conversation”, but I do remember telling them to stop texting and drive over to their friends house and have a face to face conversation. Of course, shortly after this awkward moment of showing up unexpectedly at the friends house, everything worked out fine.

This is normal advice that most parents of teenagers have probably had with the kids over the years yet I find it interesting how quickly we can start dropping a post or long text and act as though these principles do not apply to us. We need to adhere to the same advice we would give our children. Have real conversations!

Texting and social media are great places to share information and really, really bad places to try to have a conversation.

We all know that we read and "hear" inflections in social media post or text that are biased based on our perception of what someone is trying to say.

You've all done it. Your reading a text or post and you can "hear" the sarcasm or rudeness in the voice of the person sending the text without having any form of reference in how it was truly meant.

So why do we feel the need to have conversations on these platforms? I honestly don't understand. I'm not sure if some of you feel a sense of relief that your opinion was stated or that you are somehow vindicated from the attack of the wrong opinion or voice you "heard".

Maybe we are starting to run in to that time when people were warning us that we're going to lose the ability to communicate if we continue texting.

My encouragement - learn to talk to people who share different opinions than you. Follow people on social media that have different perspectives or come from different backgrounds (without responding!). Realize that a different opinion is not an attack. Learn to listen - period. Then learn to have a verbal discussion. We can all grow from it.