The Digital Age of Connection

Our Digital Age

There is an arguable argument that our digital age makes it much easier for people to connect. Emails, messenger programs, social media platforms, dating apps and perhaps even video gambling have been the societal norms for connecting. Maybe we are missing a very clear and overlooked point

Human interaction is a foundational element of relationship. It's also an integral component of the health of the nation. Consider important pieces of society for example: education, medicine, law, police and homeland security. So as to successfully operate in any of these areas, human interaction is necessary.

Putting Value on Technologies

​Yet we continue to put such tremendous value on technologies that our skillsets are getting to be obsolete. In our quest for time optimization, we have created suboptimal methods for establishing and maintaining healthy connections. Every year we advance technologically, we now step further and further away from authentic relationship. The results are increased rates of stress, depression and suicide.

Online courses are getting to be a key source of education. Text messaging is considered a suitable way for partners and spouses to communicate together and internet relationships have become considered romantic kinds of relationship. We are losing touch with one another and simultaneously losing the foundational pieces needed for well-being in society.

The Importance of Human Link

Boil it down to the fundamentals, you can't digitize human link. Manners can not be learned from online platforms. Love can't be fostered exclusively through words typed on electronic screens. Respect can't be educated through a Marvel movie or a YouTube video. Health cannot be learned by seeing fit bodies on Instagram. And medical assistance cannot occur without connection. Now, think about the enormous irony of our electronic age with respect to getting help or support.

Whenever someone is in emotional or psychological tragedy, we implore people to start up and discuss how they are feeling. Here's the logical and obvious question that is always overlooked. How is somebody expected to reach out and connect when their primary habits of participating have rendered them?

Skillset of Vulnerability

​Seriously consider the difference at play here. We're asking someone who is suffering to access and/or suddenly acquire, a skillset of vulnerability to associate using a method that is no longer the standard. The expectation is that somebody will easily reach out as it takes connection in a means that has become so foreign not just in opinion but in their actual neural communication.

Please continue to reflect these points when you find yourself so shocked over how many children and teens are taking their own lives as well as members of the army, law enforcement and first responders in our country. Life is precious, but we're placing more value on technologies.

Start Connecting Now 

​Do not wait for a crisis to know the connection, or even the lack of it in your own lives. Take the time to slow down. Take the opportunity to learn how to link. Start on your own, then your families as well as mad as it might sound, begin to reflect in your community and building relations. Technology doesn't breathe. You do, your peers do, your educators do, your partners, your neighbors do. Stay connected.