Hello everyone, I hope all is well with you. I’m back today after a week of working and getting everything ready for my son’s grad party. The party was yesterday, and it was a success. My youngest had fun, and it was good to see family and friends that I haven’t seen in a while. But enough about that.
Today, I’d like to talk about the fact that my generation will be the last generation to know what life was like before social media. I saw this meme on Facebook, and it got me thinking.
It got me thinking about technology and how we can do so many things faster and easier, and we can connect with people farther and farther away from us. But we’ve also lost something. We’ve lost that strong family connection that we’ve always had. All of my grandparents have passed away. They were the real keepers of the family’s traditions. Correct me if I’m wrong, but they were the generation that kept those traditions going.
Now that my parents’ generation has grown older these traditions have fallen by the wayside. Let’s face it, they’re a lot of work to host a big family party for the holidays, but as a kid, I loved them.
As an adult, I see how important they were. We were all able to connect with our family. That’s important. It strengthened our bond. Technology has weakened those bonds. We use social media to connect instead of family get togethers. Life has gotten busier for us, but I feel we’re less happy.
I see it in our young people where the suicide trend is on the rise. I see it in the bullying on social media and in our schools. I see it in the rise in mass shootings. All of these things have one thing in common, and that is disconnection.
If we can find a way to strengthen our connection to our family, friends, and community. I feel this will alleviate most of these problems. How do we do that, though?
That is a good question. I believe we need to revisit community centers not only for our young people, but our elderly people as well. Let’s find a way to open community centers or neighborhood centers in our larger cities. For our young people this could be done through the local schools and public libraries. The same for our elderly people, now that I think about it.
I also think the assisted living programs we currently have for our elderly should be expanded and made more affordable. I’ve found that there is a substantial down payment required. This can be a huge burden for family members when they attempt to do what’s right for their loved one. Then if a loved one passes away while in the care of the institution, the unused portion of this money is not refunded. I don’t agree with this.
To me this is a conflict of interest. The institution stands to benefit from the death of the person who’s in their care. Do you think your loved one will really get the best care money can buy? Call me cynical, but I find this highly suspect. But that’s fodder for another blog post. 😉
Do you have any ideas on how we can strengthen our connections? Leave a comment! I’d love to hear from you!