Much has been written about the dangers of internet addiction. From pornography to merely surfing the web, the internet is clearly the television of the 21st century, an electronic drug that often yanks us away from the physical world.
Making our meaning clear electronically presents extra challenges. For example, we write things like "LOL" and "LMAO" to describe our laughter, but they're no real substitute for hearing people laugh, which has real power to lift our spirits when we're feeling low.
For transferring information efficiently, the internet is excellent. For transacting emotionally sensitive or satisfying connections, it's not. My wife and I joke that we use email messaging when we're sitting back-to-back in our home office, but we use it to keep a record of our schedule. When we have a conflict, we turn our chairs around and talk.
it needs saying but feels awkward, do it in person. Look upon it as practice for handling confrontation maturely. Consider yourself drunk every time you get online so that you take steps to monitor yourself carefully.
If someone has reached out to you, they care about your response. I'm sometimes guilty of this one myself, but I'm working on it.
It's much easier to injure friendships online than in person because of the ease of creating misunderstandings electronically.
– This worksheet poses a series of 15 questions to help you discover more about your true self. Specifically, the questions tap into topics such as your talents/strengths, values, and barriers to living more authentically.
may seem too obvious to mention, but it feels qualitatively different to go out to dinner with friends than to spend several days engaged in back-and-forth email exchanges
The internet is an amazing tool. But even as it's shrunk the world and brought us closer together, it's threatened to push us further apart. Like any useful tool, to make technology serve us well requires the exercise of good judgment.
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