For 2014, Tweet Less, Read More

Good advice.

From Frank Bruni, at the New York Times:

Lately there’s been a bit of academic attention to our etiquette online, which is where so many of us spend more and more of our time. It rightly notes how much rudeness makes its way onto message boards and into Facebook threads, how quickly the back-and-forth on websites turns nasty.

That happens in part because the exchanges are disembodied: We don’t have to face whomever we’re lashing out at. But it’s also because they’re impulsive. Their timbre conforms to their tempo. Both are coarse.

Conversely, there was talk this year about the benefits of an activity that’s in some ways the antithesis of texting and tweeting with their rat-tat-tat rhythm. That activity is the reading of fiction. According to some researchers, people who settle into it are more empathetic — more attuned to what those around them think and feel — than people who don’t.

I buy that, and not from a vantage point of cultural snobbery or because I’m a Luddite. Trust me, I watch inexcusable amounts of television, much of it proudly lowbrow. I consume most of my newspapers and magazines online and almost all of my books on an iPad, and I depend gratefully on email and instant messaging to maintain friendships that might otherwise have fallen by the wayside.

But I’d bet big on real reading, fiction or nonfiction, as a prompt for empathy and a whole lot more: coolheadedness, maybe even open-mindedness, definitely deliberation. It doesn’t just yank you outside of yourself, making you consider other viewpoints without allowing for the incessant interjection and exaltation of your own. It slackens the pace. Forces a pause.

I'd argue especially for young people to put down their mobile devices and start reading. And I say that as the father of a 17-year-old. Bruni's making an argument to improve civility by increasing reflection, which reading actualizes. Reading is something for me that takes more effort than just about anything else. I can watch TV and blog without stressing the lack of concentration, but picking up a book forces me to turn off the electronics. It's nice to do it. I'm currently reading Mark Helprin's "Soldier of the Great War," a fairly epic novel which I'm not in a hurry to finish. (Years ago I used to pressure myself to finish novels with great speed; shoot, I'd never not finish a book I once started. Now, I just don't worry and enjoy it.)

In any case, more at that top link. Certainly, social media captures too much of our attention and drives too much of our outrage. It's something to think about.