The Quiet Voices Don't Get Headlines

As I sit here writing my four year old is laying in my lap. He nuzzled himself in between my chest and my laptop and won’t stop shifting to find his comfiest spot.

The beautiful thing about this moment is that he has no clue that in some small way, he’s inconveniencing me. Every time his body shifts, I get a little elbow in the gut and my typing arm has to adjust. Do I tell him? Of course not. Why? Because I want him to want to snuggle with me.

That really has nothing to do with anything, but I felt it was worth mentioning.

Lately, I’ve had this deep feeling that the trajectory of our collective voice is growing grim. The “impact of social media” debate is no longer our concern. We’ve absorbed checking our newsfeed into our daily functioning like showering or brushing our teeth. (Or calling that car that picks you up an uber instead of a taxi. Uber was first just a funny word at first, then we grew to fear it because of the murderer drivers, but now it’s the way we go. How quickly we adapt.

In general, I wouldn’t call myself an early adopter. I don’t necessarily like change as much as I know it’s needed. I tend to question what was wrong with the old way. Why do we need a new way, anyways? Nine out of ten times, I’m wrong. We needed the new way. (I just hope that I remember to bring bags to my now bagless grocery store.)

But, I continue to question the impact of social media. I realize I’m a middle-aged mom who stands with one foot in the old and new, but still, I can’t figure out a scenario where hearing other people’s thoughts and watching them dance all the time is helpful.

Is social media as a whole a platform for good? OR is it putting voices into your head when you don’t really have a place or a space to absorb it? Were we created to WATCH people’s lives with no true interaction? Or were we designed for authentic relationships?

And what about the quiet voices? The post-less ones. Who shines a spotlight on them? The authentic do-gooders who aren’t making Tik Tok reels about how great they are or who they helped that day. Like, the Ukrainian woman who is going in and out of Ukraine (in the midst of war) (in the name of Jesus) to rescue people. Seems odd that she wouldn’t create a Tik Tok about that. I suppose we’re better off with the Kardashians’ perfect skin blanketing our feeds.

We feast our eyes all day on people who are trying to make a name for themselves. It’s all over my feed and yours. But, in many ways it’s also me. It’s also you. We’re all trying to get someone to listen. To buy into our company. To read our blog. Very few of us are the quiet voices who just go about our business.

It does make me worry though. Through the power of social media, bad news travels at lightning speed. And while I’m so glad that we have the capacity to communicate globally without having to send a message via a horse going uphill in the snow both ways, I fear that it continues to build cases for people who already are looking for more evidence to prove their case.

What do you think? What’s the long-term impact of this human-less platform where we watch people live their lives?