Part Of Me Swims In The Stream

“The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.”

And my own millennials turned against and jumped on the professor’s sailboat about technology as a social isolator.

I get so upset when people start railing against technology as a social isolator and all that jazz because it’s like, without that, all my friends that live hours away by car or plane, we’d never talk. And thanks to technology, I can skype with them for hours or text them or send them pictures whenever I want without using paper or the USPS gas. They’re a couple clicks away if one of us needs the other instead of miles away. How is that a social isolator? Just because I don’t like all the people I’m physically around and prefer talking to my actual friends who are farther away using technology instead of snail mail does not make me socially isolated except by my own choice. It widens my social circle and also lets me be friends with a much more diverse group than is found in small town Iowa. How is that bad? What am I supposed to do? Talk about the weather? Why? What’s the point in talking about the weather? Small talk is just meaningless chatter we fill our day with to escape the fact that we know nothing about the other person and don’t care to go deeper because the only reason we are talking is proximity, whereas at least online you can easily find people with similar interests who want to stay up all night discussing philosophy.