The Dangers of Social Media

Today I am grateful for students with energy and enthusiasm. I am also grateful for the comfortable recliners in our living room.

I have one more post focusing on the words of Glennon Doyle Melton. She wrote a blog post on September 26th that contained some powerful thoughts on the dangers of social media. She took a 40-day hiatus from all things Internet and then wrote about her insights. Read that post here. The biggest danger among those she discussed, in my opinion, was this one: Social media threatened my only source of real peace and joy, which is gratitude.

Melton's own words as she discussed it in the post referenced above:

Social media threatened my only source of real peace and joy, which is gratitude. All of this posting about my life shoved me out of THE MOMENT, which is where gratitude lives. Choosing to live my life out on social media meant that I was never truly present because as soon as a great moment presented itself to me –I jumped right out of it. My brain said – Well, this is something remarkable, and then leaped immediately to: how am I going to describe this, and where? Facebook, Twitter, Instagram? With this, I moved right out of the moment, into my head, and then onto my computer – and just like that, the moment was lost. My kids might still be there, but I wasn’t. The sunset might still be there, but I wasn’t. And since gratitude is in the now and gratitude is the only path to joy – choosing to hop out of the now and into the cyber world is rejecting gratitude and stealing joy from myself. And so I had to retrain myself to live in gratitude again. To stay present with beautiful people and moments. Because I’ve found that remarking on every remarkable thing just makes everything less remarkable.

The moment IS where gratitude resides, and feeling grateful can only be sustained if we are able to stay mindful and present. It can seem like a tall order, and I don't know anyone who has mastered mindfulness. But what I do know is that the more I practice gratitude, the more I live in the moment.

Remarkable things are fleeting. They are meant to be. That is part of what makes them remarkable.

Why would I want to reject gratitude and steal joy from myself? Why do so many people get sucked into the remarking and lose the remarkable?

Thank you Glennon Doyle Melton. I enjoyed your book and I very much appreciate your "living outloud" approach.

Comments

  1. This is brilliant. Thank you for sharing.

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  2. Thanks Steve! I would encourage you to read more of Melton's work. Mindful and present. That's my goal today. :-)

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