Desperate to Be Heard

A couple of weeks ago, a cyber attack caused Twitter, the social network with more than forty-four million users to shut down for a couple of hours. Facebook and the blogging site LiveJournal were also affected to a lesser degree. What surprised me when this incident was reported was not that it had happened, since even U.S. government sites have proved to be not 100% secure. What caught my attention was user reaction to the loss of their communication link.

For some, the blackout created near-panic. "I can't update! I can't update!" Online communication, in their lives, is not just a hobby or an amusement but a crucial part of social interaction. Suddenly having that cut off was upsetting, even frightening; it is a veritable lifeline. One user said she felt naked without Twitter. I am from the pre-Internet generation and that seems strange to me, because she also said that "pretty much everyone knows almost every detail of my life" by her postings on Twitter. Now that would make me feel "naked"!

Years ago, in an information technology class, the instructor told us how important personal interaction was going to be in the coming years. "A high-tech society is going to demand high-touch too," he said, emphasizing that those of us who went into service careers would have to be people-oriented as well as computer-savvy. I think we see that happening. The young people who were brought up on television and electronic games are desperate to be heard. And not just the kids, because the more automated and hurried and impersonal our personal environments become, the more a lot of us wish we could just talk to someone. We too want to be heard.

We might like to think this would be solved if everyone sat down and ate dinner together. It would help, we may suppose, if teachers could have class discussions instead of spending so much time trying to maintain order. Or we just need to "unplug."

That's not likely to happen! What people want is not just to talk; they want to be heard. Nielson Online, a research firm that measures Internet traffic, reported in April that Twitter's audience retention rate is about 40% after one month of membership. It is hard to build and keep an audience, and when what a person is saying is not "heard," they are probably going to quit talking.

What I can do in my small world, and you can do in yours, is to listen, really listen. Whether you use letters and e-mails, phone calls and text messages, or actually engage in face-to-face conversation, give your friends or family members the evidence that they are being heard.

MaryMartha

Another post on listening: http://findingthefaithway.blogspot.com/2008/12/simple-gift-listening.html

Information on Twitter:
www.crn.com (Search terms: nielson report twitter)
www.money.cnn.com (Search: twitter denial of service)