{"id":11453,"date":"2023-01-16T08:56:11","date_gmt":"2023-01-16T16:56:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/?p=11453"},"modified":"2023-01-16T09:03:14","modified_gmt":"2023-01-16T17:03:14","slug":"11453","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/?p=11453","title":{"rendered":"Feeling Isolated?"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Bob Sparrow
\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Feeling isolated?\u00a0 You\u2019re not alone.\u00a0 Now there is an oxymoron<\/strong> for our times!\u00a0 It seems to me that we\u2019ve been working our way into isolation<\/strong> over the last couple of decades; certainly exacerbated by Covid recently, but largely encouraged, by the convenience of getting most everything we want or need without leaving your home and ironically, through social media<\/strong>, which can be very anti-social and divisive.<\/p>\n

Come with me inside an American household at the end of a typical day.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

Dick shuts off his computer and takes off his headset, as he completes another day of work . . . remotely<\/strong>, just as an Amazon<\/strong> truck pulls up in front of the house, for the third time this week, as the driver drops off a package at the front door \u2013 it\u2019s the cosmetics his wife, Jane, ordered yesterday.\u00a0 Shortly thereafter, the doorbell rings and it\u2019s Door Dash<\/strong> with the meal that was ordered for tonight\u2019s dinner.\u00a0 They sit down and enjoy their meal while watching a Netflix<\/strong> series. After the kids wolf down their food and are not interested in what their parents are watching on TV, they retreat to their separate bedrooms and get on their phones or computers<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Sounds pretty normal right?\u00a0 But what\u2019s missing is fairly obvious \u2013 socialization!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dick working remotely is certainly handy and saves gas and time commuting to and from work, but it eliminates any socialization with work colleagues.\u00a0 Amazon is amazing, but it keeps both Dick and Jane from getting out of the house and mingling with people to shop; ‘window shopping’ has even been replaced by computer ‘scrolling’.\u00a0 \u00a0Amazon. seems to be on a mission to make most retail stores obsolete – and they’re doing quite well at it.\u00a0 Door Dash and their like, deliver meals or\"\"<\/a> groceries to your doorstep, which keeps the family out of restaurants and grocery stores; while Netflix, and all the other streaming services, keep folks sitting silently in front of their televisions and out of movie theaters, as well as typically eliminating any family interaction or sharing of the \u2018events of the day\u2019 while sitting around the dinner table.\u00a0 Today\u2019s kids would much rather be alone with their phones or computers than sitting around the dinner table having a \u2018family discussion\u2019 or watching what their parents are watching on TV.<\/p>\n

This trend is disturbing to me.\u00a0 Even getting to know people is different; today people don\u2019t learn about each other from meeting and interacting, they learn from social media.<\/strong> \u00a0It seems that the tools we\u2019ve been given and told would increase connectivity and socialization, have done just the opposite.\u00a0 Yes, we most probably \u2018connect\u2019 more, but on a more superficial level; and mostly just to show as many people as possible what a great life we have, because we only post the good stuff!\u00a0 We also believe that there are a lot of people who want to hear our opinion on a particular subject, even though we may not be at all qualified to opine intelligently on that subject.\u00a0 Sites like Facebook<\/strong> and Twitter<\/strong> give us the platform to spew whatever is rattling around in our brains at the time, regardless of how knowledgeable or well-thought out our responses are.\u00a0 Today, everyone has a platform, which on the surface sounds good, but it is a privilege that is egregiously abused.<\/p>\n

I think we are on a very slippery social media slope and I certainly don\u2019t have the answers to find purchase thereon, but I hope to make a more conscious effort to choose socialization over social media<\/strong> this year and hope you do as well.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll be right back, after this commercial break . . .<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Kids ‘socializing’!<\/p><\/div>\n

As we all inevitably get deeper and deeper into social media, as they get deeper and deeper into us, we\u2019d like to encourage you to subscribe to our blog (Just click the \u2018SUBSCRIBE\u2019<\/strong> button at the top right of this page and put in your email address.\u00a0 The blog will come directly to your email every Monday).\u00a0 We know many of you have been subscribers for years, and we thank you, but we also know that many of you get and comment on our blogs on Facebook<\/strong>, or other social media.\u00a0 As we get closer and closer to being totally disgusted with social media and \u2018drop out\u2019, we want you to still be able to get our blog every week.\u00a0 The cost is reasonable, like free!!!<\/p>\n

Back to our programing.\u00a0 Actually, my work is done here \u2013 \u2018thought for the year\u2019 \u2013 more face-to-face<\/strong>,\u00a0 and less Facebook, Facetime and Faceplants!<\/p>\n

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

by Bob Sparrow Feeling isolated?\u00a0 You\u2019re not alone.\u00a0 Now there is an oxymoron for our times!\u00a0 It seems to me that we\u2019ve been working our way into isolation over the last couple of decades; certainly exacerbated by Covid recently, but … read more<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11457,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_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_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,4007],"tags":[2497,3454,4008,230,2968,1157],"class_list":["post-11453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","category-social-media","tag-amazon","tag-covid","tag-door-dash","tag-facebook","tag-netflix","tag-twitter"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s31aN0-11453","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/isolation.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11453"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11471,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11453\/revisions\/11471"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}