With the domination of the Internet and social media in our lives, don’t you miss the days when a nice, long, leisurely chat with loved ones was standard fare during and after a dinner date with the family?

At the International Coaching Summit 2019 organized by the International Coach Federation (ICF) Philippines last 8 November, Ms. Eileen McDargh, CSP, CPE, started the ball rolling and instantly reminded me of an energizer bunny hopping around the stage as she immediately caught the attention of a well-attended gathering of coaching professionals and corporate executives.

Ms. McDargh is a business and a work/life balance consultant to a number of household names like IBM, 3M, Xerox, American Airlines and even the US Armed Forces. She is an award-winning author of numerous leadership and communications books, a master facilitator and an executive coach and internationally recognized as number one among the World’s Top 30 Communications Professionals for 2019.

Her talk “Connecting in a Disconnected World, Talk Ain’t Cheap, It’s Priceless” certainly did not disappoint and lived up to her very impressive credentials.

Her thesis centered simply, but powerfully, on the “priceless” value of “talk.” Reflecting on this thought, indeed, I agree that in this highly digitally connected world we live in, to show up, in the here and now, and just talk with each other as human beings, reaching out, in the flesh, face-to-face, ironically, is a priceless commodity that we now take for granted.

With the domination of the Internet and social media in our lives, don’t you miss the days when a nice, long, leisurely chat with loved ones was standard fare during and after a dinner date with the family? Nowadays, more often than not, weaning away the ubiquitous smartphones from the very young ones not even in their teens can be a tough battle for parents.

I would like to share some data I googled that is indicative of our sad state of affairs. In a recent article dated October 2019 that Eileen McDargh wrote on “Three Ways to Connect and Why,” she noted that a recent study of about 20,000 Americans by Cigna, a health insurance company, reported that as much as 47 percent of the respondents felt alone or left out. As much as 41 percent of Britons say television or a pet is their main source of company. In Japan, a government study found that more than 500,000 people spend at least six months in their home without any outside contact. And woefully, the Generation Z (18 to 22 years old) and Millennials (23 to 27) scored the highest for loneliness!

For people immersed in the digital age, particularly the vulnerable young, social media, more often than not, portray lives of “friends” always mirthfully smiling and projecting a curated life that doesn’t mirror the reality of the inevitable hard knocks of life. Consequently, inadequacy with an “ordinary” life is rampant.

In another article on mental health by Ross Stevenson, “Disconnection in a Connected World,” he reported that approximately 2.77 billion people in 2019 are using social media platforms led by Facebook with 2.2 billion users and You Tube with 1.9 billion. The average time a person spends on the internet is 135 minutes per day.

In a survey of five Nordic countries (Finland, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland), deemed to be the world’s happiest region covering 2012 to 2016, it was noted that 12.3 percent of the people across these countries had admitted they were struggling or suffering. In the age group of 16 to 24 years old, 18.3 percent of this group in Denmark suffer from poor mental health with women in particular increasing to 23.8 percent. Norway has experienced a 40 percent increase over the five-year period studied. And all this is happening in a region where 87 percent of the young say they are happy.

Ross Stevenson theorizes that real-time digital connection exposes our minds to multiple streams of endless information, most likely faked or fabricated to manipulate behavior, overloading our native mental faculties, resulting potentially in unmanageable and challenging navigation of all this information potentially making a mentally vulnerable person’s world seem inadequate and small.

Both McDaugh and Stevenson conclude, however, that the paradoxical rise in loneliness, notwithstanding the lightning speed of digital connectivity, can be attributed to spending too much time looking at a screen and text messaging instead of reaching out to people, face-to-face.

Social media has affected our ability to converse, interact and connect in groups. They note, however, that social media and technology are not bad and certainly can do good if managed properly and used in the right way.

As Stevenson succinctly notes, “…there is always Yin and Yang… you cannot have good without bad, there always needs to be balance in anything in life… manage yourself, define the relationship with technology… discipline equals freedom.”

On the other hand, McDaugh advises a 30-day fast with your smartphone, eliminate your apps, refrain from looking at Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, put that cellphone very far from you at night, and greet, smile even at strangers you meet.

If I were to paraphrase these experts’ advice, simply put, folks, don’t spend hours on Facebook, get a life and reach out to friends. Hang out, have a beer with some golf buddies after a game or “chill,” as the millennials love to say. Stay really connected in this connected world!

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