I hear a lot of very intelligent adults among my friends saying that Twitter, Facebook, etc. won’t harm children, basing that opinion on the fact that it doesn’t harm themselves. And probably it doesn’t; personally, I don’t feel that Facebook or blogging or texting has had a negative impact on me, and in many ways those things have enhanced my life by allowing me to discharge certain types of communication quickly, which then allows me more time for other stuff in my time-starved day.

So I regard these things as the means to an end, not as an end in themselves. But kids who have no other experience of communication *do* regard convenience-communication as an end in itself. They don’t know how to wait. They don’t know how to ask. They don’t know how to converse with finesse, watching someone’s body language. They don’t know how precision of language and tone can completely change what they’re saying.

Immediacy isn’t hurting me, because I have a foundation of reality, and I know how to use immediacy as a tool rather than as a focal point of my life.

But that won’t be true of kids who are raised to value nothing but the quick fix.

“Turn off your air-conditioner”? This is not what I was writing about. But it is apparently what you made of it, which reminds me of the line in Anna Nalick’s song, “Breathe,” about the result of putting oneself out there through the written word:

“2 AM and I’m still awake, writing a song
If I get it all down on paper, it’s no longer inside of me,
Threatening the life it belongs to
And I feel like I’m naked in front of the crowd
Cause these words are my diary, screaming out loud
And I know that you’ll use them, however you want to.”

It’s the “I know that you’ll use them, however you want to” part that’s germaine.

Or perhaps I can learn to communicate more clearly, as I have no wish to live without air conditioning. ;o)