Today my father started using a smart phone for the first time in his life and he entered WhatsApp.
My younger brother - who got him a smartphone - created a new group, consisting of my father, mother, brother, two sisters and I.
We already had a group with my mother and her four children, as well as a group of me and my three siblings.
Aside from that, I have a personal chat with my mom, one with my twin sister, one with my other sister and one with my brother. This as well as one with my brother and his girlfriend together.
Then there's the one-on-one chat with my two brothers-in-law, who - luckily - prefer to chat with me face to face.
It's getting awfully crowded in the family chat. No offense family. I love you all!
Anyhow, this wasn't meant as a rant or complaint, but for those who didn't know, I'm an introvert and I consider myself hypersensitive ( working on that though ). I didn't end up as a hermit in a hamlet in the mountains of Portugal on coincidence. In a way, it was much needed. Now it's all about finding some kind of balance between the extremes of a stimuli rich social and city life and the polar opposite.
'Social' Media
Then again, I've probably become more and more social - in a way - in the last two and a half years, since entering Steemit and especially the Discord chat. This doesn't mean that spreading my attention over dozens of different conversations comes easy to me. Let alone, in a time where all of us are multitasking, or should I say 'single tasking back and forth' throughout the day.
It's interesting to note that this memorable day in my father's life - my mom managed to prevent him from using a smartphone for quite some years - comes at a point in time where I was very close ( not for the first time ) to quitting
Whatsapp altogether. Not out of privacy concerns or just because I dislike Facebook but mainly due to the aforementioned.
WhatsApp is addictive as hell* and makes it way harder for me to focus on that what really matters to me.
On the plus side, my father - even with decades of experience in depression - has always been a joker. It's a family thing. From today onwards, jokes - especially word jokes - will be flooding our app stream. Although this might be tiring at times, it might just be the little bit of motivation that I needed to keep using this application.
Also, what would my dad think if I left Whatsapp shortly after he entered? ;>)
It doesn't help that he isn't reading my blog. My mom does though, so surely she could explain it to him, haha!
Anyhow, I wrote about internet fasting a couple of times and this added Whatsapp group might actually make it even more urgent for me to make the one day a week Internet fast a habit, instead of just an occasional thing. So thank you for that, dad.
This also seems like the right opportunity to shamelessly plug the upcoming talk I'm about to have with @whatamidoing on Internet fasting and fasting in the broader sense of the world. You can expect this topic to be explored by the two of us, in our upcoming podcast episode.
In our first two recorded audio conversations we discuss Why Do We Want to Podcast? and spill our thoughts on Sharing the Creative Process
That's all folks.
Please Feel free to share your love/ hate relationship stories with family and social media in the comments.
*not sure if hell is addictive but you get the point.