Facebook, the New Front Porch

I remember as a kid sitting on my front porch (we called it a stoop in Brooklyn, NY) with all of my friends from the block. In the summers, after a few dozen rounds of "manhunt," there would be about 15 of us hanging out in this 10 foot wide square that made up the front yard-including the fore mentioned stoop. While we sat there, we all too often forgot that my parents' bedroom over looked the stoop... and the 15 kids on it. It never occurred to us that they or anyone could actually hear the ridiculous- often inappropriate- things we were saying- the kind of stuff that appears in "coming of age" non-fiction (Shout out to Perks of Being a Wallflower). They never said anything so we all pretended they didn't hear us. Every so often the occasional neighbor would lean out the window to tell us to "shut up already I gotta work in the morning!" or "keep it down, the kids are trying to sleep!" We didn't really care. For years this is what we did. This is how we spent our time; maybe it wasn't all too constructive, but it was how we learned to be a community... even though we never realized we were learning. We would listen to each other, we would pay attention to the kid who was a little too quiet one night and looked a little down. We played games that asked way too personal questions. We were mean sometimes. Mostly we were...community.

The days of the stoop are long gone. I realized this while reading a slew of teenagers' (and even adults') Facebook pages. Instead of sitting all together, individuals sit alone in their house, typing on each others' wall for all the world to see, even if we don't think any one's "listening." It's the same gig. Same antics, same meanness, same blatant disregard for the public-ness of comments. If it's all the same, why does it bother me so much? Well, I'll tell you...

A recent survey shows that 73% of 18-34 year-olds would rather connect on Facebook than get together.

Instead of sitting all together, everyone sits alone in their house... posting on each other's wall.

We are rapidly losing our ability to communicate in person. We live by "tweets," status updates and no more than 140 character text messages. We can't recognize that something is wrong with someone unless an emoticon pops up. I'm sorry but this :) does not comfort me in times of need. A hug does. This says, "I don't have the time to call you and check to see if you're ok."  A joke is ten times funnier when you hear some one's goofy laugh... and the occasional snort. We need to recapture the stoop- the face-to-face interactions where we're not confused about how to respond because we know when someone is joking and not just being a jerk...because we see their beautiful, devilish grin.

The Church is called to be attentive, to be in deep, caring relationship with one another. We need to be careful not to trade love and affection for a keystroke and misused punctuation (although I can't say much about correct punctuation in this entry).


So please, find a friend, get some Starbucks and find a stoop away from wifi. Turn off the phone and talk about hopes and dreams. Compare childhoods. The list of firsts. The bucket list. And for the benefit of us all... use your big boy words... because we can all "hear" you from the proverbial open window.
 
An article for your perusal: http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1008033