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Ghost Story

Recently I got "ghosted."  That is to say, someone with whom I'd acquired a rapport simply disappeared on me.  In this instance, I sent a text and never received a reply.  That has only a tenuous connection with social media.  It's more akin to the old-fashioned experience of not having your phone calls returned, but nowadays it's much easier to do and therefore exponentially more common.  And when it happens on a dating site or on Facebook, we are definitely in the realm of social media.

According to an article in Psychology Today, 50 percent of people on Plenty of Fish, a free dating site, report having been ghosted, and nearly as many have done the ghosting.

Why do people ghost?

People who ghost are primarily focused on avoiding their own emotional discomfort and they aren’t thinking about how it makes the other person feel. The lack of social connections to people who are met online also means there are less social consequences to dropping out of someone’s life. The more it happens, either to themselves or their friends, the more people become desensitized to it and the more likely they are to do it to someone else.

 Why does it hurt so much when it happens to you?

For many people ghosting can result in feelings of being disrespected, used and disposable. If you have known the person beyond more than a few dates then it can be even more traumatic. When someone we love and trust disengages from us it feels like a very deep betrayal.

 The article goes into a lot more detail about both these points, but that's the basic picture.

In theological terms, ghosting is an example of turning what Martin Buber termed "I-Thou" relationships to an "I-it" relationship.  In the former case you're treated as a subject with intrinsic value.  In the latter you're treated like an object--a thing to be used and discarded.  That's devastating, even in instances where the relationship is new and there's little at stake.  Being treated as if you don't matter--in a sense, as if you don't even exist enough for someone to tell you what's going on--is inherently painful.

What to do about this?  There is the usual answer (and a very good one):  turn it over to God and let your relationship with Him remind you of how powerfully and unconditionally you are loved and worth loving.  And there is an answer built around educating people to the costs associated with ghosting someone--so that we won't do it ourselves--and understanding why people ghost, which makes being ghosted a little less crazy-making.  If not, you can find yourself haunted by a ghost.

  

Social Media Homesick Blues

In my last post I suggested that social media was a powerful force for good, one that offset much (I would hardly say all) of the loss of Putnam's "social capital" in the "real world."  In this post I examine the opposite end of the spectrum:  the widespread theory that social media is deleterious to one's mental health.  How widespread?  See for yourself.  Just google "social media and depression," "social media addiction," and/or "social media and mental health."

A recent article on Healthline asserts that "Social Media Increases Depression." It reports a recent study at the University of Pennsylvania which concluded that student subjects who limited their exposure to social media experienced less depression than students who consumed the "normal" amount; that is to say, a lot.

Baseline readings for participants were taken at the beginning of the trial in several areas of well-being: social support, fear of missing out, loneliness, anxiety, depression, self-esteem, autonomy, and self-acceptance. 

At the end of the trial, those in the experimental group saw both loneliness and depressive symptoms decline, with the largest changes happening in those who reported greater levels of depression.

The correlation was strong enough to appear causative, but in what way was social media detrimental?  “What happens many times when they log on is that you kind of activate a lot of social comparison,” said Oscar Ybarra, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan. “People don’t necessarily have to be super aware that this is occurring, but it does. You log on, you’re generally dealing with very curated content on the other side.”  Nearly everyone on Facebook, for example, emphasizes the positive aspects of their lives to the extent that they seem to have no life problems.  Instead they are perpetually getting together with friends, or announcing some professional success, or being in a perfect relationship, and so on.  Even when one is conscious that people are crafting a curated view of their lives, the unconscious tendency is still to compare oneself to the charmed lives that others seem to lead, and find oneself wanting.

Then there's "FOMO," which stands for "fear of missing out."

Amy Summerville, PhD, a professor of psychology at Miami University in Ohio, is an expert on issues of regret and the psychology of “what might have been."

She explains that FOMO is an extension of larger issues of inclusion and social standing. Once our basic needs are met, like food, shelter, and water, the need for inclusion and social interaction ranks right up there, she says. “The FOMO experience specifically is this feeling that I personally could have been there and I wasn’t. I do think that part of the reason that’s really powerful is this cue that maybe we’re not being included by people we have important social relationships with,” she told Healthline.

The now ubiquitous use of social media and technology has created a world in which we can gaze into our own crystal ball to see what our friends are doing at almost any time of day. And that’s not necessarily a good thing.   

Other articles I've found on the subject pretty much say the same thing, but occasionally with one new wrinkle:  social media is addictive.  Many people, including myself, look at Facebook numerous times a day.  Some of us wind up doing so compulsively.  So compulsively that when we abstain from social media we exhibit definite withdrawal symptoms.

A couple of days ago I posted a status update on Facebook asking my FB friends to offer their own appraisals of the impact of social media.  Several of them observed that interactions with FB friends, while they might be fun, did not provide the psychological boost that one experiences when interacting with friends in real life.  I think that's astute; I would almost say intuitively obvious.  And it's not unreasonable to suppose that at some level the human mind perceives the ersatz interactions in social media as hollow:  the equivalent of seeing a picture of a nice juicy steak rather than actually dining on it.

And I have said nothing about the trolls and cyberbullies out there.  At best, they aren't good for the soul.  At worst they can cause devastating psychological damage.  Most of us have seen news items reporting that cyberbullying drove a teenager to attempt or commit suicide.

So where is God in all of this?  The apostle Paul offers some insight.  "All things are lawful for me," he wrote, "but not all things are helpful.  All things are lawful for me, but I will not be enslaved by anything." (1 Corinthians, chapter 6, verse 12.) 

What's So Bad About Bowling Alone?

Back in 2000, political scientist Robert D. Putnam published a best-selling book arguing that America's supply of "social capital"--the web of interpersonal interactions that made for a healthy community--was badly depleted.  The title, Bowling Alone, came from his observation that although more Americans were bowling than ever before, they weren't bowling in leagues.  At first blush this might sound trivial, but from my childhood I can conjure up memories of what he meant.  My parents belonged to a bowling league and went bowling on a weekly basis.  This put them in regular contact with a group of people who, while not necessarily close friends, were acquainted with each other well enough that they could rely on each other not just for socializing (in itself an important human need), but also for help when needed.

Putnam's research indicated that this had survival value.  Joining and participating in one group, he asserted, cut in half one's odds of dying next year.  That might be stretching a point, but few would argue that disconnectedness is anything but detrimental.  Lonely people are seldom healthy people.

The Bowling Alone web site can provide you with a lot more background.

When I first became acquainted with the book I thought Putnam's argument was compelling.  I still think it's important.  But one day I had an epiphany.  Putnam, I decided, was basically wrong.  Community had not become attenuated.  It had migrated into cyberspace.  Literally millions of people were finding community online:  in chat rooms, on message boards, dating sites, and so on.

Organization for political and social action no longer depended on the slow mobilization of concerned people.  A single web site or blog could reach thousands of like-minded persons.  As I write this, almost two decades after Bowling Alone appeared, newly-elected Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez received 62 percent of her campaign contributions from small-dollar donors (less than $200).  Without the Internet and social media that would have been virtually impossible.  Similarly, supporters of President Trump have so far donated $15.6 million in funds to construct the Border Wall that Mexico won't pay for--nor, thus far, the U.S. government.

So maybe "bowling alone" isn't so bad after all.  The question remains, however:  is "virtual" community (community in cyberspace) as healthy as "real world" community?

I'll tackle that issue in my next post.

About Radical Civility

Why “Radical Civility”? The phrase occurred to me a year ago, when I was fretting about the polarized state of discourse in this country. Radio and TV talk show participants blast away at each other under the thin guise of discussing the issues of the day. Ordinary citizens do the same thing, and the tone is often no better among faith-based people who, presumably, ought to know better. We live in what Deborah Tannen has termed an “argument culture.”

As a specialist in the Civil War era, I can hardly argue that things have never been worse. But they are bad enough, and I am tired of it. But how to get beyond it?

The most obvious problem is that if a civil public discourse were easy it would already be the norm. The I-hate-you-I-hate-you-back model of public exchange is common because it works. It meets people’s individual needs to vent their spleens and it meets the needs of politicians, lobbyists and political activists to mobilize political support. The most common political tool is the creation of fear. People do not so much vote in favor of things as they vote against things. In the American experience there is what has been called the “paranoid style” in politics. The most common variety is the threat to liberty. This goes back to the American Revolution, when the revolutionaries portrayed the British government and its policies as a threat to the liberties of colonists. A half-generation later the Federalists portrayed the Democratic-Republicans as a threat to liberty and vice versa; the Whigs and Democrats played on the same theme in the 1830s and 1840s; the Democrats and Republicans did the same in the 1850s and 1860s, and of course enough Americans believed this rhetoric to spark a civil war in 1861. I could multiply examples almost indefinitely. Examples from our own day, like the culture wars, are too obvious to need elaboration.

To the politics of fear may be added the tendency to see debate in terms of winning and losing. This model is explicitly promoted in nearly all high school debate clubs; it is used to measure presidential debates; it is of course the basis of our court system. In court the stakes are the guilt or innocence of a defendant. In presidential debates the stakes are election to an office. But what purpose winning serves in everyday debate I cannot fathom. What do you win? Usually your “defeated” opponent, crushed by your devastating wit and knowledge, is simply humiliated and through humilation becomes more, not less, wedded to his own position. All you really win is a boost to your own ego, and there are other, better ways to gain that.

Both the politics of fear and the win/lose model of debate very effectively close off honest discussion. Stacking the deck, ad homimen attacks, verbal tricks, solipsism, and a host of other tactics that would not be tolerated in a high school term paper are the common currency of almost every political conversation. Again, such tactics make sense if you want to gain election or block a given bill. But why citizens would employ these methods among themselves is less obvious, because for the most part, deprived of the chance to ever weigh the issues independently, we effectively just parrot the opinions packaged for us by the political elite.

Not only do citizens consume--indeed, we’re force-fed--these pre-packaged opinions in bumper stickers, slogans, and sound bites, often enough what passes for political thought takes the form of dreaming up our own bumper stickers, slogans, and sound bites. Listen to those who call in to almost any politically-related radio talk show. You’ll see what I mean.

Yet it is hard, in such a climate, not to fight fire with fire. The aggressive, take-no-prisoners approach has a seductive intensity. By contrast, civility too easily seems bland and wishy washy. What is needed, I think, is civility, but a radical civility as bold and uncompromising as the argument culture.

To achieve that kind of civility is no easy task. Surely it requires a willingness to grow, to seek wisdom, and to display, as Christ is said to have done, both grace and truth. That kind of work is nothing if not spiritual. And a commitment to it is as much as I, a deeply wounded Christian, can muster, at least for the time being.