FollowWhat do YOU think of this extremely controversial Facebook ad (for Facebook Home) of a family during dinnertime? Think technology is grand or that we’re going to hell in a hand basket? 
Most of us have been there, at least during adolescence, when we were bored to tears as one family member or another droned on about a topic we may have found uninteresting.
I was taught to listen politely. I admit I often drew a blank when it came time to respond. That is, when the person quit talking. And that is, if s/he did.
When my mind drifted off to la-la land during these moments of boredom and disinterest, I guess I wasn’t THAT much more polite than the older-than-adolescents and old-enough-to-know-better peeps in this ad are as they play with their cell phones and get caught up on and wrapped up in their feeds.
While I see the humor in the ad, and even liked the ballerina and the snow-falling scene, it still made me sad. Yes, sad. That this woman had nothing more important going on in her life than her cats. That no one was listening. It made me sad that she was oblivious to the older-than-adolescents’ activities. That no one was kind enough to try and broaden her horizons by maybe showing her what they were doing. Or “shared” the things that were so entertaining to them. That they “like”. Maybe by signing her up for a Facebook account, like my ninety-two-year-old friend Mary Jones has done. 
But the ad also made me thankful. Yes, thankful. That my husband and I put away our phones at dinnertime. Well, that’s not quite true. Sometimes we use one of our phones to play music on our Apple TV. Or sometimes we’ll be having a discussion and want to get our facts straight; so we search on the Internet for the answers. Or sometimes we’ll see that one of our sons is calling, so we’ll Facetime with him. It’s almost like our son’s here for dinner. And for that, I’m thankful.
Tell me. Do you think technology is grand or that it’s taking us to hell in a hand basket? And by the way, what’s a hand basket?
Leave a Reply