There has been a change of screenery. People have shifted from spending time on the front porch and peering through screen doors to staring at computer screens, television screens and cell phone screens.

The ushering in of recent modern technologies has undoubtedly brought with it a shift in people’s priorities. As a recent Communications graduate, I am all too familiar with the Canadian communications theorist Marshall McLuhan who stated that “we shape our tools and then they shape us.” It is worth taking a closer look at just what were shaping out to be.

Getting Connected

Virtual realities and social networking websites serve as recent examples of how technology has altered our interactions.

With online communities and virtual reality, people are often opting for a simulation of what is “real”. They are choosing a virtual reality over their physical reality. Some people are more comfortable in their avatar – a graphical representation of themselves – than they are in their own skin. Playing baseball in your living room using the Wii can be chosen over going to play baseball at the local park. Participating in World of Warcraft with a guild of people you’ve never met seems more exciting than making the trek upstairs to eat dinner with your family.

With social networking websites such as Facebook and Myspace, it is possible to know almost everything about someone without ever meeting them. It has become easier and more efficient to message 20 people than to have one phone or in-person conversation. Strangers and the guy-who-ate-glue-in-grade-one that you decided to add as your friend, are privy to the same information as your closest friends.

With the growing popularity of Facebook, it has been rumoured that there will no longer be a need for high school reunions, as any milestones that have taken place over the last 20 years of someone’s life are posted for all to see. What’s Ann doing? She moved to Calgary with her husband Dave and is about to have her third child – the ultrasound pictures are up – oh and about 30 seconds ago her status said that she was watching a Golden Girls marathon on TV. People are able to gain access to the intimate details of someone’s life with the simple click of a mouse.

The Disconnect

With the explosion of communication technologies, we are able to broadcast our lives and watch the lives of others with minimal effort. Yet despite becoming more accessible then ever before, we also appear to have become somewhat detached.

When the invention of the television first emerged, the social setting of the home shifted from the dinner table to the living room so that families could gather around the television. This shift intensified with the advent of computers as people gazed at screens in the setting of their office or bedroom. A significant change here, however, is that people are often staring at the screen alone. Although the Internet was designed to connect people, we are ironically sometimes left feeling isolated.

So we are stuck in this double bind of being both extremely social and also somewhat isolated. Our Facebook list can boast 300 friends, but we can be lacking in intimate relationships. Or perhaps it is the opposite, and we feel like we have our greatest interactions online but cannot seem to connect with people outside of the cyber sphere. Regardless of whether it is online or in everyday interactions, what is it that drives people in search of relationships and community?

Beyond Technology

We seem to be designed for a deeper connection. We all know how frustrating it can be to remain in repetitive surface level conversations at times when we need to have more meaningful interactions. Some of us are able to search out these connections with close friends or in dating relationships. Some of us at one point or another have wondered about God and if there is a God.

So many of us are willing to seek out relationships with people in the real or virtual world, but get a little weary or skeptical when someone tells us a real relationship with God is possible. Why is that?

Have you ever tried talking to God? You know, in those unexpected or frightening moments – the ones you often don’t want to admit you’ve been in – when you realize you’re in over your head? You think to yourself that if there is any truth to this God thing, and if there were ever a time to ask God for help, it would be now. Your cell phone wouldn’t reach people fast enough and so you try to talk to a God who might actually help you and better yet, might actually care about what you’re going through.

I’ve done this. I called them my “911 Prayers”. It is in those moments of weakness that we hope for a glimpse of greatness. Of course as soon as the situation was resolved I had forgotten about who I had called on for help, satisfied that I no longer had to worry. I was happy to draw on the potential power of God but completely content with having the relationship be commitment-free, requiring nothing of myself.

But I’ve begun to learn that the best relationships, and the real ones, are reciprocal. If I’m serious about getting to get to know God, I can’t just call Him and hang up, I’ve got to stay on the line.

The best relationships require both parties involved to be genuinely interested in the other. I can’t just ask God to help me out of a stressful situation but not be willing to hear what He may want to tell me about other areas of my life.

If you had a friend who called you at 3 am ever so often because they needed help and then they forgot about you during the time in-between, you’d grow pretty annoyed with that person. I’m not trying to imply that God gets annoyed with us, but I did get to the realization that I was being pretty selfish by expecting God to show up on my terms but not finding out about His.

It was only by pursuing God in an ongoing way that I really discovered what a real relationship with Him looked like and how it fulfilled the connection I was looking for.

Addicted to MySpace? (or maybe Facebook or another social networking site) So, what’s the deal? Rob does some introspection and figures out that there’s more to life than MySpace.

I remember when I was the guy who wasn’t doing the MySpace thing. Not being much of a computer type, I just couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. All of my buddies kept bugging me about it though, and so I thought to myself, “well, it wouldn’t hurt to try it once.”

I went through the process of making a profile, entering in all of my information in great detail (hey, if you’re going to do something, do it right, right?), and then came the photos. Grabbing my trusty phone, I quickly snapped a picture that looked just right for MySpace: black and white, not looking directly at the camera, with just a hint of melancholy. Perfect. Finally, a name … I had to be careful too, because MySpace kept warning me that once I had chosen one, it couldn’t be changed …ever. With that finished, I clicked “submit” and held my breath.

It was a life changing moment when I saw the words for the first time: “You have a friend request.” Who was Tom? How did he find me so quickly? Why does he want to be my friend? I’m not one to take friendship lightly, but this guy seemed nice enough, so I said OK.

Little did I know at that time that Tom was leading me down a dark path from which there was certainly no return. Soon, I was adding friends and requesting to be friends with people I’d never met. As my list of friends grew, I quickly became aware that I would have to be very careful about who was in my coveted “Top 8.”

I was writing blogs, reading blogs, commenting on blogs, commenting on comments, joining groups, creating groups, posting bulletins, reading bulletins, taking top ten quizzes that told the world what I thought about my favorite CDs, movies and what character I would be if I was living in the world of Buffy the Vampire Slayer!

My greatest MySpace moment occurred when one of my blogs cracked the top ten most read blogs on the site. Not bad, considering MySpace now boasts over 45 million subscribers. I was like an internet pariah, basking in my self-published glory. I had miraculously discovered the reason that Al Gore had invented the Internet.

My days were filled with high-speed connection happiness. Admittedly, there were some small problems with MySpace. The site would go down at random points during the day. I would spend an hour pouring my thoughts into a blog only to have it lost in the great MySpace void. And suddenly, people I had never met were posting comments about my personal life. But on the whole, MySpace had become the community I had always wanted. Or at least, I thought it was …

In the back of my mind there were faint alarms going off, but I did hear them, and it caused me to think: What exactly is it that causes us to spend hours staring at a computer screen in the hopes that someone will post a supportive comment about the party we went to last Friday, or the fight we had Tuesday night with our girlfriend? Why are we so desperate for a community that exists only in cyberspace?

Just three years ago, meeting someone on the Internet was worthy of being cast to the bottom rung of the social ladder. Now, thanks to MySpace, meeting people via the Internet is not only socially acceptable, but there is a certain level of coolness to having tons of friends on your MySpace page. What was once considered sad is now celebrated … How very odd.

We live in a society where honest friendship is hard to find. As people created to live together in community, we crave human interaction, and yet it somehow eludes us no matter where we seem to look. On MySpace we find people being completely open with their feelings, confessing their sins to a virtual world. In fact, many of us will openly post things for the whole world to read that we would never confide to our pastor. That shouldn’t be too surprising considering most churches have become the types of places where openness and truthfulness is not very welcome.

It seems as though the time honored tradition of face-to-face communication has all but been eradicated. Friendship is complex. Community is something that takes work. We conclude that being friends with real people is simply too complicated so we search for a community that can be had on our terms and our terms alone, and we find it on places like MySpace. Don’t like a friend? Delete them. Don’t want someone’s opinion? Ban their input. Don’t like the way you look? Simply change your photo. You can be who you want, when you want, with who you want. In fact, it’s so perfect and so addictive that it’s easy to spend all of our time there, pouring ourselves into our own little MySpace kingdoms.

I’m not certain how I finally realized that I was worshipping at the MySpace altar. Perhaps it was the fact that I was dragging in late to work as a result of late night blogging. Maybe I realized I was spending more time talking to my new “Internet” friends than my real life college buddies. Perhaps it was the fact that the letters had begun to fade from my keyboard from the incessant typing.

Whatever the reason, I am thankful. No matter how fun it is, an addiction is an addiction, and it is not a healthy thing. I knew that I had to do something before I lost my soul completely to the void of cyberspace, and so I hatched one final desperate plan. I would quit MySpace for two weeks cold turkey.

I’m not proposing a ban on MySpace or anything like that. In fact, I’m not even deleting my own profile. I’m simply saying that things like MySpace are only healthy when done in moderation. Logging a hundred hours of Internet time on MySpace is nowhere near as fulfilling as spending real face-to-face time with a good friend.

The famous communications guru Marshall McLuhan had a saying, “The medium is the message,” an idea based on the theory that the world was headed to a point of global communication where how we said something would become more important than what we were saying. I wonder what he would think about MySpace, where our online profiles have become more important to many of us than our real selves.

I posted one final blog advising the MySpace world that I was taking a bit of a “MySpace sabbatical” to regain some focus. This has not been easy, but I figure that the new perspective on life will be well worth the time spent away from my Mac iBook.

In the past few days since leaving MySpace, I’ve gone for a walk, watched Hotel Rwanda (something I’d been swearing I’d do for months now) and started a great book. Last night, I even spent some time with my best friend Dusty, sitting on his front porch and talking about life, work and faith. He has a new job, and I’m happy for him. He began to tell me all about the great day he’d had and for a moment, I caught myself thinking, “this would make such a great blog,” before suddenly catching myself. I was wrong. This makes for great life.

Rob Alderman spent the past several years touring with his alt-country band, Bigger Than Dallas. He enjoys listening to Johnny Cash as well as writing about theology and pop-culture. Contact the author on his blog. Previously published on relevantmagazine.com, this aritcle was republished by permission of the author.