BY ANNA RUSH
akrush1@gmail.com
Facebook has a new commercial that absolutely enrages me.
It shows a girl around college age at a family dinner. One of the ladies at the table, arguably the crazy, unmarried aunt who smells like cats and gives the worst Christmas presents, begins to tell a story. The story is painfully boring, but the girl has a method of escape: Facebook on her phone.
By staring down at her phone, her aunt’s boring story is drowned out and her family fades into the background as she gets transported to all of the fun things her friends are doing.
This commercial fires me up.
Or as my grandmother, whose stories I absolutely love, says, it really burns my biscuit. The commercial is selling escapism.
Do not sit through another family get-together and listen to your loved ones because you have Facebook!
Staring at your phone will effectively block out what is happening around you. You can relive that concert you went to last week or “like” that picture of your friend’s dog in a dress. The disheartening thing is, the commercial is absolutely right and happening at family dinners everywhere.
Staring at your phone WILL block out what is happening around you.
You call it multitasking, but when you are on your phone you aren’t fully aware of what is happening around you. Think about the last time you were concentrated on a very important tweet or trying to select the best Instagram filter for the food you just ordered. When someone asked you a question or started talking to you, did you hear them?
I would be willing to bet money that you didn’t — that you waited to finish what you were doing, and then looked up and responded with a puzzled, “Sorry, what?”
While Facebook offers constant connectedness to your friends and family, it places an impenetrable wall between you and the people who are with you when you decide to look at your phone.
If you’ve ever been around me in a social setting and spent the majority of the time on your phone, it is very likely that I will yell, “BE WHERE YOU ARE” at you and heckle you to put your phone away.
The people whom you are with at the moment should be your focus. That aunt’s boring story might actually give you something to laugh at, even if it’s when you and your brother go to spike your drinks in Grandmom’s garage.
On a more sobering note, you are not guaranteed another year sitting at the family table listening to your aunt. When it comes to the time when there is just an empty chair at the table, you will miss her stories.
So next time you are given the opportunity to be with your family or are even just grabbing a bite to eat with your friends, turn your phone off and “be where you are.”
Anna Rush is a second-year law student from Hattiesburg. She graduated from Mississippi State University in 2011. Follow her on Twitter @annakrush.
