Take a minute to look at your Facebook wall.
How many “friends” do you have? Hundreds? Thousands?

Take a look at your Twitter account.
How many people are you following? How many follow you?

How often do you send and receive texts?

We have been fed this line that we’re more connected than we’ve ever been. We have more ways to have “meaningful” relationships than any generation that has come before us. If that is truly the case, why do we feel increasingly more lonely?

We aren’t really more connected with one another. We’re actually more isolated than we’ve ever been and worse than that, we believe we’re not. We’re missing connection and deceiving ourselves into believing we’re more connected than ever. We can’t figure out why we feel so lonely.

Our connection online and through these internet connected devices we carry with us have sold us a false sense of connectivity and human interaction.

Don’t get me wrong, the potential for increased connectivity exists today that has never existed before. We have the opportunity to start new relationships that were once impossible, but only if we take the next step in community building. We have to take the step of face to face interactions. We don’t take our connectivity far enough. We stop short of real human-edifying connection.

We’ve replaced real relationships and intimacy for bad habits. We have become a people who can no longer communicate beyond 140 characters. We are more reluctant than ever to have difficult conversations because these conversations have become increasingly more difficult now that we no longer have deep respect and intimacy with others. In place of respect and intimacy, we’ve put passive aggressive behaviors like texting difficult and important information.

Our culture is on a breakneck pace in terms of developing technology, but we are also on an equally paced downward slide of relational competency.

I am challenging myself to take a step this week to have a face to face connection with someone just to develop the relationship.

What about you?