Whether it’s schoolwork, rushing to activities or just normal teenage angst, kids seem to feel a lot of stress today. So as they make their way into adulthood, I am determined to help my children learn to slow down and quiet their minds. Leila says I sound too New Agey sometimes, but I am convinced they can find a different level of happiness if they learn not only the value of technology but the value of escaping it too. Even President Obama has mentioned the need to unplug—so I know I’m in good company.
Not long ago I did a story for World News Tonight about the brain-soothing effects of nature. Diane Sawyer loves stories on emerging science and was excited for me to explore a new study that suggested reasons to put down our devices. It seems that dopamine, the happy chemical in the brain, is released during even a short, fifteen-minute walk amid nature. Yes, an infusion of trees and chirping birds can substitute for an antidepressant! Our brain, frazzled by all the multitasking, actually calms and sends positive feedback when we make time to turn everything off and go for a walk in a garden or in the park. Even a walk among pictures of nature scenes showed a release of dopamine in the brain!
So, clearly I am not completely out of my mind to nag my family about silencing the phones and tablets for a short time here and there. I am convinced that I am happier and more focused with my family when I step away from my devices too. My mood lifts and I am more patient. I even feel better physically when I am not in the midst of information overload.
Wouldn’t life be a bit more peaceful and pleasant not knowing every single development the second it happens? This may sound crazy coming from a journalist, but I am as stressed as everyone else, and the influx of constant information hypes me up even more. I will learn about the latest murder, political scandal or plane crash soon enough. But for a couple of hours here and there, I want to free my mind. I think our lives would be more peaceful, relaxing and interesting without all of these interferences.
Somehow this burning desire to always feel connected has created a giant level of disconnection that has infected so many of us like a sweeping virus. I look around restaurants and see tables of friends or a family sitting together and not saying a word to one another because they all have their noses in their phones. No one even looks at each other! And worse, no one seems bothered by it. Whatever happened to actually talking to people at dinner?
Genuine communication is about the words we speak—not the words we type or the sentences we can tap out in 140 characters or less. I am deeply proud of my Twitter followers, and I appreciate a quick text to say “I love you,” but I hope it doesn’t come to replace the beauty of actually hearing those words from the person who is sending them. I want my children to know the difference between the two. In the meantime, I keep lobbying for “unplugged Sundays,” when we all agree to put down the phones, iPads, and any other distracting technology and focus on books, museums and simply being with one another . . . but so far I don’t have any takers.
AL
Antisocial Media
I saw a sign at a café the other day that said, “No Wi-Fi. Talk to Each Other! Call Your Mom. Pretend it’s 1993. Live.”
Pretty good advice when you think about it.
In a sense, I am a schizophrenic lover of technology. I embrace it and yet I’m annoyed by it too. Once you open the box, you can’t close it.
I still love the way turning the page of a book feels as opposed to the finger swipe across the screen of my iPad or Kindle. I know it’s often easier and more convenient to read on a device, but I don’t think you comprehend the material in the same way as you do when you physically connect with the paper. (Studies support this!)
There’s just something kind of special about holding a book in your hand or putting a pen to paper rather than connecting to an electronic device. Somehow, you are transported to a time and dimension electronics can’t take you.
We’ve come to a place in society where our communication has been limited—if not stunted to 140 characters or less, certainly condensing emotion and meaning to a minimum. As a result, we’ve inadvertently created a world of Short Attention Span Theater.
What’s the rush?
Is everyone so busy and important in their own lives that we’ve lost our ability to actually talk to the people who matter to us—whether coworkers, friends or family?
We are living in a weird time.
People no longer talk to one another.
We “chat.”
We “text.”
We “Instagram.”
Not long ago, I drove Leila and two of her friends to a party and none of them said a word the entire way. They were all on their phones. This seemed odd for a car full of teenage girls. In my day, girls were giggly, chatty and always talking. As I drove in silence, I simultaneously felt very current and very old.
God only knows what is going to be out there in the next ten years. If you have kids who are five or six years old right now, good luck to you. I have no idea what you will be faced with and I’m glad I won’t have to deal with it because my kids will be out of my house by then. They will probably have ocular implants giving them displays on their retinas. Phones will be grafted into their ear canal, and they will be able to make a call just by touching their temple. And Lord knows where the paper will come out when they blink “print” on their retinal display.
I can barely deal with the social media outlets we have today!
• • •
As the dad of a preteen, a teenager and a millennial, one of the most important lessons I try to convey to them is that the Internet is forever. Once something’s posted on the Web, it is there for all time, whether true or false. And believe me when I say that your prospective colleges and employers will be Googling your online presence. Do you think those Facebook or Instagram photos of you on spring break that your folks don’t know about are going to help advance your cause? And you’d better hope no one sees those shots of you on bootycall.com!
It’s great that there’s a lot of information out there in the world readily available and accessible at our fingertips. My daughter’s teachers all have their own Web sites and use them to give homework assignments. Schools are pushing kids to the Internet to study, research and explore.
But here’s a news flash for you.
Just because something is on the Internet doesn’t mean it’s true!
Here are a couple of gems about me!
I am a big amateur jam maker.
No!
David Letterman gave me my big break.
NO!
Yet these two tidbits appeared on my Wikipedia page for the longest time as fact.
The possibility of removing something once it’s online ranges from very, very, very difficult to flat-out impossible. So, if you post a photo of yourself looking like a fool, just remember, it will remain there for everyone you work with today, might work with tomorrow or may work with in the future to see! And just in case you thought everything was safe in the cloud? Forget about it. Think about how many celebrities have had their sexy photos hacked from the cloud! Nothing is safe. My best advice is not to post anything, ever, that you wouldn’t want your grandma to see!
Speaking of work, if you’re on LinkedIn and you want to connect with me . . . please don’t!
Leave me alone.
I know that experts tell you to reach out to people you don’t know and ask them to connect with you, but don’t! They’re wrong! I don’t want to help you. I would rather have enough time to help people I know. It’s not that I am being rude or that I don’t care about you—okay, maybe I don’t care about you; but I don’t know you!
And for those I do know: stop e-mailing so much. If you want my help, pick up the phone and ask for it. I don’t want to spend time reading an e-mail, which you obviously think is very important to me.
IT’S NOT!
Like I have nothing else to d
o with my day than read your eight-paragraph e-mail about your career woes and then take the time to respond?
And then you have to respond back to me.
And then I respond back to you.
And before you know it, we are in a pitiful Ping-Pong match of e-mails!
No!
Don’t do it!
CALL ME!
We can take care of whatever it is you need in ten minutes.
And while I am on this roll, let’s talk about Twitter.
I like Twitter because it’s efficient and to the point. It’s also why I like Vine. Six seconds and you’re out. But don’t mistake this for communication. I still prefer a good old-fashioned phone call. I prefer hearing the sound of a friend’s laugh over reading “LOL.” There is no comparison between real emotion and a symbolic emoticon.
Deborah would rather text than talk on the phone—at least with me. My father used to take breaks in his day as a bus driver, stop at a phone booth and make it a point to call my mother and check in a couple of times a day, so I was raised with the mentality that this is what good husbands are supposed to do. But whenever I make superfluous check-in calls to my wife, it annoys her.
To be fair, I usually call about the time my day is done and she is smack in the middle of her day. I get that she is busy working and my intention isn’t to bother her. I am merely letting her know I am thinking about her.
“Just text me,” she says. So now, that’s what I do.
I get it. I myself hate feeling like I have to respond to a text just because someone sent one to me—especially right away. I get a text from one of my kids, and if I don’t respond immediately, I get a second text that says, “Hello???” Sorry. Life doesn’t work that way. I am not on your schedule. I am not your monkey trained to respond every time you text.
And I can’t stand all of the abbreviations.
I’ve taken the time to decipher them so I know what my kids and their friends are saying; I just hate them. It’s a truncating of language that is already in danger of disappearing. If you send me a message with letters instead of words, I will not respond. BRB, TTYL, IRL—none of that works for me. I don’t want to decipher what you mean. Speak English—because I have paid for a really good education and I don’t want to feel like an idiot! We are already suffering from a diminution of the English language, and kids are having trouble writing essays because they can’t think beyond 140 characters anymore.
While I will admit that I actually like taking pictures—with a real camera—if I ever find the guy who put the camera in the cell phone, I am going to kick his ass. I don’t care how old he is—I am going to beat the crap out of him.
People are missing out on so much of life because they’re too busy documenting every last second of it through the camera on their phone.
“This is what I had for breakfast.”
Click.
Ooh, thanks for sharing that picture of your bacon and eggs with me.
LIKE I’VE NEVER SEEN THAT BEFORE! If you’re going to share a meal, it had better damn well be spectacular or really out of the ordinary.
“Here’s the view out the window of my airplane.”
Click.
Wow. There had better be aliens or unicorns out there on the wing, or at least a beautiful sunset or amazing cloud formation. Come on, people.
“Here’s a picture of my daughter’s first poop!”
Click.
REALLY?
Too much information!
When we host concerts on the plaza at the Today show, I am always amazed by the number of people who watch the concert through the three-inch screen on their phone (or even worse, their iPad. How stupid does that look? And thanks for blocking my view with your iPad!). They’re recording it instead of actually being in the moment and taking in the show that’s happening right in front of them. It’s as if they’re not even there. Somehow, the advent of the camera in our phones has created a social disconnect that worries me. Take your face out of your phone and look at me.
LOOK AT ME!
Don’t hide behind your phone.
I hate it when people use their phone as a shield of protection.
I’ve got news for you. No matter what material your phone is made out of, it isn’t going to protect you from the wrath of a pissed-off father—ever.
Listen, texting is great for some things, like “Can you pick up milk on your way home?” I’ve even grown to appreciate it for sending an occasional “I love you” when Deborah or my kids aren’t expecting it. But recently, my oldest daughter’s boyfriend sent me a text.
“Mr. Roker, I would like to talk to you about Courtney and me moving in together.”
“Dude, NOT A CONVERSATION FOR TEXT. PLEASE CALL” was my response.
About a minute later, my phone rang.
It wasn’t the boyfriend. It was Courtney.
“Dad, why are you yelling at Anthony?”
I explained that I wasn’t yelling. How could I be yelling OVER TEXT!
I suppose to some people, texting in capital letters means you’re yelling, but to me it’s just emphasizing. I told Courtney it would have been nice to get a little heads-up from her that she was thinking about moving in with her boyfriend before I heard it from him—through a text.
Here’s a little advice for anyone out there who thinks texting about important matters is okay.
If you plan to:
quit your job
ask for your girlfriend’s hand in marriage
ask for time off from your boss
ask for a divorce
fight with your wife, girlfriend, kids
anything that is life-changing or important . . .
Don’t do it over text.
Take my word on this.
You will regret it.
Hiding behind a text or an e-mail has not only killed personal communication but facilitates passive-aggressiveness. How many times have you sent a text or an e-mail to someone knowing they weren’t around so you could avoid the hard questions or a conversation you just don’t want to have?
We’ve all done it!
I had an agent who was in many ways a wonderful guy, but he was pretty old-school. While he had embraced technology, as he got older, his crotchetiness had taken on a strident tone and his e-mails could come off like drone missile strikes. There was one so devastating that I feared for my career at NBC. It so infuriated my then boss, Jeff Zucker, that I thought I was going to lose my job. Jeff was livid, and I couldn’t blame him. When I saw the e-mail, all I could think about was the famous Seinfeld “Shrinkage” episode, where things get taken out of context. The tone and nuance he was trying to convey were completely lost. And that’s the biggest problem with any type of electronic communication; lacking tone of voice, facial expression or context, they’re incredibly subject to misinterpretation. That was the closest I ever came to being fired (that I know of!). Everyone involved in my career needed to get together for a face-to-face meeting to address the e-mail and clear the air. Thankfully, we were able to calm down the situation at NBC, but I realized it was time to move on when my agent didn’t really see the error of his ways. He couldn’t grasp that what might be acceptable in a phone call just comes off differently in an e-mail.
We all have a tendency to respond to e-mails quickly—like there’s a race to see who can reply the quickest. When you do that, there’s great potential for misinterpretation.
Bam!
You knock out a knee-jerk response and the person on the other end, who might have understood if you’d spoken face-to-face, is now royally pissed.
I have learned that with e-mail, as in life, it is always best to take a moment, an hour or even a day before responding to something emotional. Come back, take a look at the e-mail and make sure it reads exactly right—that it responds the way you
really want to, with the right words and the right tone. There have been many occasions I’ve come back and reread my saved draft and said, “Never mind.”
What might feel good in the moment usually becomes a lengthy period of regret for just a morsel of satisfaction, an unnecessary zinger or getting in the last word.
Life can’t be expressed in 140 characters. As much as we have all come to rely on the convenience and ease our electronic devices offer us for communication (I’m guilty of it), there will never be a better way to connect with loved ones than being with them. Show them how much they matter through your words and actions, not your emoticons.
10
Learning to Slow Down
DEBORAH
Taxicab Therapy
#MiamiMornings Cabbing it out round town since 8 am because I’m bored! On some “taxi driver be my shrink for the hour, leave the meter running” type s**t #WhereAmIEvenGoing
Rihanna Tweet August 12, 2013
By now it’s probably clear that I have a special bond with New York City cabdrivers. If I am not involved in some kind of conversation with them, the ride just feels sort of empty.
Over the years of living in New York, I’ve discovered that cabdrivers are some of the greatest psychiatrists and philosophers. That twenty-minute ride can be better than a therapy session, and cheaper too. Many a time have I gotten into a cab driven by a great conversationalist with provocative views on politics or life. We might talk about the driver’s home country or what it’s like to be a female cabdriver, or who should be the next president or the mayor of our great city. Cabdrivers are often a kind of touchstone—straightforward, plainspoken and honest. As a reporter and a Southerner, I appreciate that.
Been There, Done That Page 18