I never really tell students what they ought to do. Instead, I often ask them whether they had seriously considered options other than the one for which they want my feedback. I even tell them that my job is to make sure they have looked at their options from multiple perspectives, so that they can then decide for themselves.
Years ago, one student said that she wished for a Hogwart School kind of a situation. If you recall, (btw, Harry Potter is now 20 years old!) students are assigned to the houses based on what the magic hat senses. This student said it will be awesome if such a hat existed that will then tell her what she should do. "What about free will?" I asked her with a smile.
So, when the student asked me for advice, I engaged with her quite a bit. And one of the questions that I asked her was about how she spends time outside of classes, and about friends. "Most people value the time they spent in college for the experiences they had," I told her. "It is not classes and teachers that people cherish later on. It is all about experiences with people, especially the healthy experiences."
I am not sure what kind of an impact my words had on that student. I have done my part.
Students have gazillion "friends" in their social media lives, but, are they meaningfully engaging with their peers in the real world? I hope they are; else, it is recipe for loneliness, which is one of the increasing health problems. Which is why the UK has even appointed a minister for loneliness!
As this essay puts it:
Loneliness is the leprosy of the 21st century, eating away at its victims and repelling those who encounter it.Ouch!
It may be that affluence is making things worse. We prize space, privacy and independence, and the richer we get the more of these we can afford, yet their corollary is being alone. Our economy works better if people move around to find work, yet mobility stretches and breaks the bonds of family and community. Phillips told me that “capitalism and a mobile labour market make connections between people very precarious and difficult. In so far as people feel that what they’ve got to do is get on, they are, as it were, encouraged to sacrifice relationship and intimacy.”I am with this opinion author who cautions against overblowing the loneliness situation. And I am also in agreement with the author's concluding lines:
But if money can’t shield you from loneliness, poverty can exacerbate it.
In places like the United States and Britain, it’s the poor, unemployed, displaced and migrant populations that stand to suffer most from loneliness and isolation. Their lives are unstable, and so are their relationships. When they get lonely, they are the least able to get adequate social or medical support.
I don’t believe we have a loneliness epidemic. But millions of people are suffering from social disconnection. Whether or not they have a minister for loneliness, they deserve more attention and help than we’re offering today.
I hope the young, including that student, are making healthy choices.
2 comments:
Slightly tangential comment.
There are forms and forms of relationship. Personal touch is extremely important , but I submit that its not impossible to have meaningful relationships with only an occasional personal contact.
I think, what is important is depth in the relationship. The issue with social media relationships is that it can often be shallow. And that is the problem rather than the medium per se. For that matter there are many people who meet hundreds of people in person but don't have a meaningful relationship with anybody. The social butterflies .....
The fundamentals of not being lonely remain the same. Caring about others. Genuinely wanting to , and working on, being a friend, colleague, boss, subordinate, lover, spouse, sibling, parent etc etc - whatever the human relationship might be. Social media can make it easier if employed with the care and diligence I am advocating.
Maybe its something we will evolve to use well. After all the storm is very new. Man is not wired to adapt to sudden changes very well. We may flounder initially but settle down eventually. Meanwhile let me raise a glass to you and a few others, whom I met through social media, interact primarily through social media and meet only occasionally, but value tremendously.
"what is important is depth in the relationship."
"Caring about others."
Yep. Which is why I blog about empathy over and over and over. I am afraid that empathy is not something that naturally comes to us, given our selfish gene. For most of us, it takes a lot of learning and effort to rise above the base selfishness and to empathize. Social media makes this worse.
Yes, salute to social media for helping some of us interact--the interactions would not have been possible in the old days. But, we are saluting in an echo chamber. The vast world out there is the world of trump, where social media does a fantastic job of tearing people down, bullying, and everything other than empathy :(
Post a Comment