Let’s Play and Connect in Person…Online!
Wednesday, November 28, 2018 - Joe Kiedinger
I hope you had a great Thanksgiving (my favorite holiday)!
Check out this picture. Here were my three girls and their cousins all playing together, online. They were literally stacked on top of one another, and all on their phones. From what I gathered, they were playing some popular farm/business game where they could charge for their crops and negotiate with one another for other crops needed to fulfill orders.
Sure, they played pool and hide-and-seek prior to this, like when I was a kid. Then, we didn’t hear running; we just heard laughing. We found them huddled on the couch with phones in-hand. Welcome to our next generation of workforce! 
We are already noticing some Millennials being less extroverted due to isolation with technology and more self-conscious due to social media. It’s been recently discovered that Facebook actually causes depression in the people studied. Can you imagine working to introduce a mega-breakthrough to the world on Facebook? Your intent may be to connect people and the result could turn into mass depression. Oops.
The truth is, the screen is a reality of our technological age. All helicopter parents are thrilled (those who hover over their kids) because they can keep minute-by-minute GPS coordinates on their children. I admit I love it because I can text and phone each child when I need to. We now even text our kids down for dinner. Remember the old intercom?
Because it’s a reality, we must have limits. After all, soda is great but we can’t drink a 12 pack each day. So, what’s my answer in the face of this technology? Love. To me, love is time spent one-on-one with a person or with immediate family while talking, playing and sharing. We must all carve out more time for such activities. The truth is, if we don’t schedule it, it never happens. We have a rule that no phones are allowed up at the cabin. The kids actually look forward to the constraints and don’t complain because everyone knows that’s the rule, including for us parents.
It’s these little rules and scheduled times together that will battle the effects of social media and technology. I’m convinced.
Joe Kiedinger
ACTION PLAN: Plan time to make time!