Yesterday I read one of those news that make you smile at first, and then leave you with a sense of disarray, especially if you’ve grown in a country like mine.
The news is that the several Catholic priests in Italy are asking their parishioners to give up the use of SMS messages, computer games, social networking tools, at least on Friday during the Lent leading to Easter, but even better if more than just once a week.
I was raised Catholic and I do remember that when I was a kid, the few TV channels would broadcast only classical music, documentaries or movies about the Passion on Holy Friday. I also remember that my mother would not serve meat on Fridays. But at the time, she would not prevent me from meeting my friends and playing – although more quietly – as any other day.
Text messages, computer games, chat lines, social networking tools: these are just means to communicate and socialize, pretty much like playing soccer in the field close to the local church or meeting at a bar for a cup of coffee. Indeed there are plenty of cases where these tools have been associated to activities that the Catholic church (and many others) define as sinful, many of which are even illegal: adultery, pedophilia, terrorism. But even more where the same tools have strengthened bonds between people, helped raise money for noble causes, addressed national emergencies.
After all, isn’t the Pope himself using these tools when deemed fit? Look at this or this.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Monica // Mar 10, 2009 at 5:46 am
Digital technologies such as computers, video games, mobile, web 2.0 technologies are undoubtably giving people lots of new capabilities to be in touch, communicate, share, participate etc. in an emerging “digital world”.
However, they are also driving radical changes in people behaviours – particularly the younger generations – including their ability to socialise, interact or simply talk with people in the physical world! And the change is not necessarely positive.
Kids, tweens and teens – they spend hours in front video games, TV and computer screens – in a one-to-one relation with their favourite electronic toy. They loose interest for any other activity than that, including meeting with friends to play – say- football (I am pretty sure you were playing that
They become addicted, as with a drug – not the way we were enjoying having play time with our friends.
And look at their parents – perhaps stuck in front of a PC, too busy browsing the Internet, posting on Facebook, blogging on Twitter – to spend time with their kids playing football of Lego – as we did when we were kids. Or more simply just sitting in front of a TV screen. Infact, in many families, kids have at least 3 screens in their own bedroom – a personal TV, a personal computer, a personal game consolle. Perhaps, also a mobile phone!
So – in many families, in Italy and elsewhere in first world countries – individuals live under the same roof but actually already spending hours of their time in a digital, virtual context of their own, which doesn’t include other members of the family.
And same in school, in neightbourhood, and many other society organizations. Individuals interact easily through a digital media, but are loosing the ability to do it in the real world.
Isn’t this sad? I think it is. So perhaps this invite from the Pope is a suggestion to individuals to stop a second and try discovering again a sort of “human dimension” we risk to loose because of the increasing exposure to digital technologies…
Monica
2 NaomiHi // Mar 10, 2009 at 8:54 am
Great post Andrea.
Monica – while I agree that in some families, some children may be over-exposed to digital media and platforms causing a possible drop in the ability to relate to each other in real life, this isn’t the reality for most families. The point Andrea was making, though, is a quite different one – namely that positioning the use of these tools and services (Twitter, Facebook, Bebo and others) as something to be given up or sacificed for lent both misses the point of the services and intimates that using them is somehow inherently bad.
As a good Catholic girl myself I was raised to believe that you made a sacrifice during Lent to honour the sacrifice made on the cross – you gave up something that was an indulgence and, therefore, not necessary to your daily existence. I’m not about to suggest that Twitter or IM is necessary to either of my children, but communication is – and these tools (and others) enable my daughters to reach out to people and broaden their horizons in ways unimaginable to me when I was there age. Most important, though (at least to me), is the ability these tools give my girls to stay in contact with me in a completely free and spontaneous way. I’m may not be physically present when they come home from school, but when their MSN icons pop up it is (for me) as good an indicator of where they are as hearing the front door opening. It’s a simple cue that enables me to ping them while they’re doing their homework to check in. It’s not profound. It’s not terribly complex. And our communication on IM is inevitably brief – but it still counts as communication – and in these early teen years that’s a powerful thing.
My kids and their friends use these tools not as a substitute for all the things we did as children, but as an enhancement to those activities. They arrange their social lives online and then go offline and get social. They share their offline experiences with online friends – with some inevitable overlap. They communicate with people next door and in a village half way round the world about their shared interests – but to do that they have to HAVE shared interests (for my girls it’s horses). This Christmas my youngest and one of her friends both got complex lego sets – they had great fun chronicling their progress in digital photographs and mini blog posts and shared tips and tricks with each other online while building their models offline.
I’m with Andrea – these tools are the means not the end.
N
3 Anthony Bradley // Mar 10, 2009 at 12:55 pm
There is irony here as well as the age old “fear” of new cultural movements that will certainly destroy our brain cells, morality, family structures, etc., Remember rock and roll, television, etc. (even the telephone was feared). Remember how computers were going to replace all of us, no one would have a job and the economy would collapse because of it. Yet somehow we manage to survive and even thrive. This reaction is natural and no longer worries me. I would worry more is if no one was espousing the doom of society due to some new peril because this would mean 1. there was nothing new going on or 2. no one was asking the important question, “Is this really harmful?” Some things gained popularity (chlorofluorocarbons, leaded gasoline, radiation, cocaine, etc.) that were indeed very harmful. But again, these were more chemical than behavioral.
4 Dan Sholler // Mar 10, 2009 at 2:56 pm
I think the interesting question here is not about whether these things are harmful, but whether they are an indulgence. Not being Catholic, I haven’t a very clear notion of what Lent is intended to mean, but using the description of another respondent above, the idea is “you gave up something that was an indulgence and, therefore, not necessary to your daily existence.”
While there are certain things that are clearly an indulgence, in today’s world many of these things are necessary to how we have structured our lives. As one of two working parents with small children, I would be hard pressed to get through a day without exchanging some sort of electronic communication with my wife about child logistics, meal preparation or the other mundane tasks that we all perform. Could we arrange our lives so that we could operate without this kind of communication? Sure, but in today’s world that is kind of like asking whether we can live off the electricity grid, or eat only food we have grown ourselves.. neither of which are not typical forms of sacrifices that I see my Catholic friends making for Lent.
So my take is that electronic communication in any form (including tweets and facebook status posts ) have become essential to daily living for many of us, and should not be considered and indulgence. (although I am guessing that chocolate will remain on the list. )
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