Youth & Texting: “First take the plank out of your eye…” (Mt. 7:5)

It is commonplace to criticize those under 30 for their excessive use of texting and other social network tools. “These kids can’t communicate face-to-face anymore… They are so rude, they ignore friends and family siting right next to them to be on those damn phones.” Concern about social networking, technology, and the young has, ironcally, gone viral. Perhaps those ready to endlessly complain about the young might heed the advice found in Matthew’s Gospel: 

You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. (Mt. 7:5)

Strong words from Matthew. Do they fit this situation? Is there a plank in the eyes of those over 30 that prevents us from seeing clearly enough to remove the speck from the eyes of the young? 

I think there is. And it has a name. Jacob Burak wrote about “the plank” recently in Aeon (click here) and called it FoMO – the Fear of Missing Out. 

(FoMO) is the feeling that we’re missing out on something more exciting, more important, or more interesting going on somewhere else. It is the unease of feeling that others are having a more rewarding experience and we are not a part of it

We (us pre-texters) are all too familiar with this FoMO experience. As Burak points out, human nature itself is hard-wired with this dread. It is cross generational, and while social networking technology amplifies the problem, it is not the root cause. Blaming the technology misses the point: in the words of Pogo, “we have met the enemy, and he is us.”

FoMO has at its base unfulfilled psychological needs for love, respect, autonomy and security. Our young are using texting and social networks because, as Burak writes, of the anxiety that they are missing out on something more exciting, more important, or more interesting going on somewhere else. It is the anxst that others are having a more rewarding experience and they are not a part of it.

Here age does play a factor: many of us over 30 (and most of us over 50!) simply are not comfortable with all of those buttons and therefore have not tasted the anxiety of missing out on that one text, that one thread, that one new link that is the door to Nirvana. But we understand FoMO. We worry that we will miss out on a professional advancement, profitable deals, or accumulation of wealth. FoMO is painful, whether felt by young or old.

Perhaps the young are more adept at trying to medicate FoMO using social networking and other new technologies. Like most medicines, social networking has side effects. The auto accident caused by the youth texting while driving is the best known of these side effects. Another side effect, ironically, of “social” networking is an “unsocial” disconnection with other human beings in physical proximity!

Burak’s article points to the work of Herbert Stein for a solution. It’s termed “satisfice” – a “portmanteau of ‘satisfy’ and ‘suffice’ – to suggest that instead of trying to maximise our benefits, we seek a merely ‘good enough’ result.”

It is our generation, not just the young, who are obsessed with missing out: of the perfect love, the perfect job, the perfect house, the perfect deal, the perfect life. Ironically this actually all but guarantees that we are missing out. And I fear we have passed this FoMO on to our young. Social networking is the latest way to try and scratch that itch.

The young are already sensing this, I think, with their interest in and drive towards minimalist. Rather than this anxiety on missing out, we need to get comfortable with “good enough.” Burak sites Emerson for wisdom on why “good enough” is the real solution to FoMO.

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.

Let’s take that beam out of our eye, share with our young the paradox of losing to gain, of satisfice. Perhaps social networking, when no longer used to medicate FoMO, will improve culture rather than threaten it. Maybe even to let the young satisfice their needs rather than live in FoMO.