Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, The Internet in general….Those are the main ways that I’ve been engaging with the world ever since I became pregnant, “quit working”, and chose to stay home to take care of my kids.

I’m of the generation that still remembers the main way of getting news of the world: in print, on radio, on TV. I grew up seeing my parents reading the morning paper, listening to news stations on the radio, getting magazine subscriptions in the mail, watching the nightly news broadcasts on television. And, more often than not, I was right there with them, reading and listening and watching.

I’m an only child. I find that a lot of us tend to be rather “bookish”. Without siblings to distract or annoy us or to follow around, our parents are often our main companions and role models. Who else are you going to argue with, discuss things with, learn from? (Well…for those of us only children who are not complete extroverts, anyway). So, being informed about what was happening around the world was obviously, based upon the behavior and talk of my parents, very important. It was simply a part of being educated. And education was of the utmost importance. How did one stay educated? Well, reading was a huge part.

One would read, and yes, listen and watch, and then one would discuss the things that you read and heard and saw with actual live people you knew and encountered in your life: friends, family, teachers, fellow students, co-workers; sometimes with strangers on buses, in waiting rooms, in lines, at the park, wherever…Oftentimes, on the phone. Because that’s where people were. And human communication involved such social things as voice intonation, facial expression, body language, etc…Manners, in general. Sometimes this communication was civil and sometimes it was not. I think we really tried to be civil though, because when you’re face to face with someone, or ear to ear, there is an immediate feedback, an immediate, physically felt, response.

It wasn’t just the news of the world you would share with each other either. It was news of what was going on with you personally. That’s the stuff we really enjoyed talking with each other about, more than anything probably.

And all of the above communication involved time. It took us a lot more effort back then. We had to fact-check, with multiple sources, often involving print-based media, which took more than just a few minutes or seconds, and sometimes involved miles of travel to arrive at its destination for distribution. We had to pick up a phone, engage in conversation that could meander off-topic and back. We had to edit, and re-edit. Question and re-question.

With the advent of the Internet and “social media”, obviously, things have rapidly changed. I haven’t been sure for a long while now how I feel about it. I know I’m not the only one. I know I certainly can’t speak for kids who have grown up with it and who don’t know anything about the “before” times… All I can speak to is what the experience is for those of us who can remember and how this strange new world of communication has affected us. The thing is: how it affects us has been affecting them. They see us, they watch us, they imitate us, they note what seems important to us, how we get our information, how much time we spend on it….

I’ve digressed…as I am wont to do….because I really started out thinking about how I’m embarking on a month-long quest to completely ignore Facebook and Instagram (luckily I never got mired down in Twitter or SnapChat or other platforms – FaceBook and Instagram were enough trouble in themselves) and also to try ignoring the news of the world. Yes, I am going to attempt to do something that used to feel like heresy, like anathema, to me – retreat, somewhat, into ignorance. I’m going to retreat into my own immediate world. Why? Because with the advent of all this new technology and means of communication, the personal has merged with the political (world events) to an extent that I feel has never existed before. Yes, as my dad and others have always said, “the personal is political and vice versa”…But, also, as my mom has always believed, “it’s all in God’s hands”…

In other words, I’m realizing that in this era when the Internet has brought all the info, all the communication, all the things, at full throttle directly into our faces at all times, from everywhere and everyone, because I am someone who cares maybe a bit more than the average, and because I am not God-like in being able to actually do anything about any of it, and because this caring about what happens and this caring about information feels so damn overwhelming that it has essentially paralyzed me for years and years now… I need to face the things I can actually take action on…my own little piece of this world…and only this piece: my physical life, the physical lives of my family and small circle of friends. The world is too much of a distraction….an extremely scary distraction right now.