9 Reasons Unsociable People Like Social Media

There is a lot of chatter around the subject of the sociability of social media. Many questions are being asked. And many of them are good questions. Is social media good for our society or are there too many negatives to the large amount of time many people spend on social media? Do we spend so much time and energy connecting with people in the cyber world that we are failing to fully live a non-cyber life?

If you are observant you have seen a table full of teens or young adults in a restaurant with their faces buried in their smart phones texting other people about what they are doing. Which seems strange to me because all they are doing is sitting in a restaurant not talking to the people they have chosen to spend the evening with while texting people they have chosen to not be with. (Yes I know about prepositions.) The question is asked, “Are we missing the moments of life as we attempt to record the moments of life?” We have all seen the people who, during a child’s performance in a play or at a recital, are busy scurrying around the room attempting to get the best shot or camera angle. Will they have to go home and watch the video to really see the performance?

It is not unusual for me to forget my smart phone and go a day without it. Even so, I have been a bit concerned that I am too tethered to it. Yesterday I downloaded an app that registers how many times a day I check my phone. Of course, I have to check my phone to check the app that tells me how many times I check my phone. Somehow, that just seems wrong.

Often I go to lunch and leave it sitting on my desk. The only thing that motivates me to carry it is that if my wife calls me more than twice and I fail to pick up she assumes something horrible has happened to me. I hate to cause her that heartache and concern, so I try to remember to carry my phone. But I will admit that eating lunch without my phone works for me. Unlike some of colleagues who seem to spend a majority of the lunch hour texting and chatting on their phones. No doubt these conversations are of great importance but they leave me, the person sitting with them, feeling rather unimportant and out of the loop. I occasionally think about texting them just so I can have their attention. Since when did the people calling or texting us take priority over the people we are with physically? It is like the old days when I found myself in the check out at a department store and the clerk would stop checking me out to answer a phone call. Why does the phone take precedence? For years I have had the policy: If I am busy, my phone is busy. If I am with someone I will not pick up a call. (Unless it is my wife. Reason already stated.)

Here is the other side of that coin. Social media – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, texting and all the other forms it come in, works best for people like me. I am an introvert. Those who don’t understand introverts assume we are unsociable or antisocial. Not true. We introverts love people and we love conversations: Only we like you in small doses and are only interested in talking about meaningful matters. We love to talk but we abhor small talk. And even though most might not think it is designed for us, the “unsociable”, social media is a gift from God.

Unsociable people love social media because:

1. We can engage with you when and as often as we want to – or not.
2. We can end the conversations with the click of a button.
3. If you get on our nerves, we can unfriend you.
4. You can send us long texts and we don’t have to read them and you still got to say all you wanted to say.
5. We can answer you with an emoticon. Like this.
6. We can mark your email as spam and never see it or feel a need to read or respond to it.
7. If we don’t want to check Facebook we don’t have to look at it. For days at a time.
8. We save time because we think: Why spend three minutes texting you when we could just call you. And then we think: If I call you I have to talk to you – forget it. Thus we save all that time.
9. Twitter allows the user a message of no more than 140 characters. That is pretty much our maximum message anyway.

So, if you are looking for me, check out social media. And if I fail to respond to you try not to take it personally.

 Copyright © 2014, William T. McConnell, All Rights Reserved

Bill McConnell is Senior Minister at Lindenwood Christian Church in Memphis, Tennessee and is a Church Transformation consultant and a Christian Leadership Coach. He is a frequent speaker at Church Transformation events. His latest book on church transformation is DEVELOPING A SIGNIFICANT CHURCH and is available at Westbow Press. He can be contacted @ bill45053@gmail.com. Connect with him on Facebook or on Twitter @bill45053.