photo by ajawin

A friend is one to whom one can pour out all the contents of one’s heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that the gentlest of hands will take and sift it, keeping what is worth keeping, and, with the breath of kindness, blow the rest away.

-Arab proverb

• 28 percent admitted spending less time socializing face-to-face with peers because of the amount of time they spend online.
• 20 percent said they spend less time having sex because they are online.

Reading about these findings reminded me of a book I just finished reading by Michael Bugeja called Interpersonal Divide: The Search for Community in a Technological Age. Bugeja looks at the detrimental socialization implications of so much time being spent working with technological devices. Hint: the survey’s findings are no big surprise. He looks at the irony of using the Internet for self-help purposes; in order to improve relationships we should not be looking to the blind, unfiltered advice of strangers on the Internet but to other flesh and blood people in our real time lives.