It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great. -Jimmy Dugan in A League of Their Own
It’s been over a week since I deleted my social media accounts. In the future, I’ll write about my experience. Suffice it to say I’m thriving without it so far. But I have made things more difficult for myself. Facebook and Instagram gave me instant access to lots of people. I could quickly and painlessly like photos of their kids, know what they’re up to, and Facebook even reminded me when it was their birthday. Now if I want to connect with someone, it takes more time and effort. I have a suspicion that this is a good thing. My current hypothesis is that the added effort makes the contact I do make more meaningful and better.
Maybe things are too easy on Facebook. For example, on my birthday I got tons of happy birthday wishes from tons of people who wouldn’t have otherwise realized it was my birthday, many of whom I hadn’t seen in decades. Getting birthday wishes on Facebook feels nice, and I always appreciated when anyone made the effort. But there was a part of it that felt hollow. How many of those people would have known it was my birthday if Facebook hadn’t reminded them? How many would call or text if they had to go through any kind of trouble? My husband refused to make his birthday available to Facebook for exactly these reasons. He wanted to see how many people actually remembered his birthday, and he got zero birthday wishes on his timeline, though his immediate family and my parents did reach out and text or call. I imagine that would be the experience for most of us.
To remember someone’s birthday without Facebook’s assistance requires effort. You have to care enough to want to know when it is, and to take the trouble to ask the person if you don’t know it. You then have to make the effort to put it on a calendar, and then take some sort of action on the day to wish them happy birthday. It’s a pain in the neck. And yet, when someone takes time out of their day to call and say happy birthday, it means a whole lot, doesn’t it? I suppose it’s precisely because of the effort we know it requires.
I have been playing Words With Friends lately, and I’ve been pondering these same tradeoffs. Playing traditional Scrabble is much harder than playing Words With Friends. First of all, you have to take it out of the box and set it up. You have to convince someone to play with you, and then you need to sit down together for an extended period of time, with no other distractions. That’s hard enough. Then there’s the gameplay. Scrabble is difficult. You have to figure out a word to place, then you have to make sure you spell it right, and for the best results, you need to play the word in a strategic place. You also have to do the math to calculate your score. And when you’re not playing a word, you have to decide whether or not to challenge a suspicious-looking word your opponent played.
Meanwhile, you can have 30 Words With Friends matches going simultaneously. You can play against your friends or complete strangers. It’s effortless. No need to have company over. No need to clean the house or have snacks ready. Just tap play and you’re in the game. The game will not let you play an invalid word. You can try out various combinations of letters on the board until you find one that will give you the maximum number of points, conveniently calculated by the computer.
There are also “power-ups,” which if used in a game of Scrabble would absolutely be called cheating. In Words With Friends, their use is encouraged. They glow and try to entice you when you take too long on your turn. Out of pride, or maybe stubbornness, I refuse to use them. I choose to believe no one else is using these power-ups either. Regardless, the game feels less fun. When I play a high scoring word, it feels better when it was a word I knew before, instead of one that I found by the process of guessing if something is a word and having the computer tell me whether I can play it. Regardless, my victories feel hollow. In every match, I’ve played words that I found by a process of guessing and checking. Winning a match of Scrabble in real life is much more exhilarating, precisely because it’s harder.
Does any of this even matter? Isn’t anything we spend our time doing worth thinking about? I want my kids to understand the value of doing the things that require more effort. I want them to view things that are too easy with suspicion. I want them to grow up to be adults who can interact with other adults and have meaningful relationships, and I’m worried that our devices are making that much more difficult. I’m trying to figure out how to best use technology for real connection, so that I can teach my kids the right way.
I try to make them aware of how device time actually makes them feel. We have learned from experience that if they spend the entire day on their screens, their day feels empty at the end. They feel empty at the end. Even so, it’s hard for them to choose to not have screen time and go do something else instead. Screen time is easy, and it makes parenting easier too. When my kids are zoned out on their devices, they’re usually not arguing, or talking, or making noise.
Take the devices away and they have to interact. That means they bicker. Or they discuss things. Or they play and get loud. Less device time means I have to make more effort. But all that interaction is meaningful. The days we look back on with fondness are the days when we made the effort to go fishing, or go for a hike, or make a pizza together. The hard conversations we have had were tough in the moment, but they have led to an enduring feeling of closeness and understanding. It’s hard to communicate and work things out, but life gets better when we do. In the end, not having social media will likely mean I have connections to fewer people overall. And I’m okay with that. I’d rather go an inch wide, but a mile deep with each connection. I have a hunch that choosing to do the harder things will lead to a more meaningful life. Only time will tell.