{"id":1431,"date":"2019-11-03T17:30:04","date_gmt":"2019-11-04T00:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=1431"},"modified":"2019-11-02T15:49:26","modified_gmt":"2019-11-02T21:49:26","slug":"anti-social-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=1431","title":{"rendered":"(Anti) Social Media"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I have trouble keeping up with the general characteristics of Gen-X and Millennials and don’t really like labels anyway since people are different. However, my son Matthew, born in 1977, explained that he is neither Gen-X nor Millennial. He’s in-between, and they don’t have a good name for them. According to this article by Anna Garvey<\/a>, written back in 2015, the “Oregon Trail Generation,” as she calls them, “…came of age just as the very essence of communication was experiencing a seismic shift, and it\u2019s given us a unique perspective that\u2019s half analog old school and half digital new school.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here’s what I found interesting: she decries the evils of today’s social media, which are just asides in this article. Here’s her first observation:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those born in the late 70s and early 80s were the last group to have a childhood devoid of all the technology that makes childhood and adolescence today pretty much the worst thing imaginable<\/strong>.\u00a0 We were the last gasp of a time before sexting, Facebook shaming, and constant communication.<\/em> (Emphasis mine)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later on, she writes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The importance of going through some of life\u2019s toughest years without the toxic intrusion of social media<\/strong> really can\u2019t be overstated.\u00a0 Myspace was born in 2003 and Facebook became available to all college students in 2004.\u00a0 So if you were born in 1981-1982, for example, you were literally the last graduating class to finish college without social media being part of the experience.\u00a0When we get together with our fellow Oregon Trail Generation friends, we frequently discuss how insanely glad we are that we escaped the middle school, high school and college years before social media took over and made an already challenging life stage exponentially more hellish.<\/em> (Emphasis mine)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve written before about the need for what author Cal Newport calls “digital minimalism<\/a>.” But Anna Garvey’s remarks go beyond not needlessly cluttering up our lives: social media can be harmful, especially to our kids and grandkids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. (Ephesians 5.18, ESV)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have trouble keeping up with the general characteristics of Gen-X and Millennials and don’t really like labels anyway since people are different. However, my son Matthew, born in 1977, explained that he is neither Gen-X nor Millennial. He’s in-between, and they don’t have a good name for them. According to this article by Anna … Continue reading (Anti) Social Media<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8X9bo-n5","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1431"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1433,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1431\/revisions\/1433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}