When I first started college America Online, or AOL, was the big craze. Before texting, instagram, gchat, twitter, or any other social media AOL pioneered instant messaging (im) and chat rooms. I opened my first account my first semester and it was fantastic. I could chat with people across the US, even across the world. I met people from Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia, California, all kinds of places. I would chat with them for hours.
I was connected – or at least I thought I was. True, I met real live people and true, those people are all valuable. But because I was spending so much time with online friends I forgot to live offline. My need to live online was so encompassing I would drive 15 minutes each way during my lunch hour just to be online for 30 minutes. For two years I lived online. My grades suffered, I had to move back home, I didn’t have many friends – all because I wanted to be connected virtually. After two years I had enough. I looked around and saw other people enjoying life apart from the computer and I joined them. I now prefer face-to-face communication to phone, text or messaging. I still use technology but I use it to my enhance my life, not be my life.
A few years after I rediscovered the real world tech companies found a way to make the virtual world mobile. I have watched since 2008 as personal communication has fallen in favor of electronic communication. Don’t be fooled, communicating electronically is not the same as personal communication – emoticons prove this. When you have to display your face and mood through an icon something is amiss. And just because you are not locked away in your dorm room like I was does not mean your not locked in the virtual world.
My original intent was to post this last Thursday, but because I rediscovered the real world I did not have time to be on the computer. I was enjoying the company of others, not needing a cell signal to do so. Get to It! isn’t about doing stuff just to do it. It’s about community, it’s about real, personal communication, it’s about looking up from the virtual world in your hand and rediscovering the real world in front of you.