One of the more interesting contrasts between generations is the advance of technology. When I was a kid, amusement and time killing consisted partly of riding bikes, playing ball, tag, war, or hide-and-seek (outside), watching TV, and playing with toys or board games (inside). Lest you think my age peers whiled the day away by whittling, jumping in the swimming hole, or rolling a hoop down the street with a stick, we did have some pretty sweet, and potentially deadly, activities with which to occupy our time. Imagine some of these gems, with the backdrop of today’s litigious and hyper-cautious age. Some of the indoor “toys” (for want of a better description) that a lot of boys had were chemistry sets, wood burning kits, and a couple of versions of devices that formed stuff from heated goo and plastic. In the event that you didn’t burn the house down, or at least set a table or desk ablaze by doing what kids did with those things, personal injury, ala the loss of an eye or minor falange, was possible if not likely. If by some twist of fate you survived these indoor distractions without hospitalization or a visit to the ER, all kinds of physical mayhem awaited a rambunctious youngster outside. Statistically speaking, I’m pretty sure a 10 year old would’ve been better off, health-wise, smoking a pack of Marlboro reds every day than hurtling himself down a Slip ‘n Slide into a Juniper tree or rock garden. Lawn darts (Jarts, by name), metal swing sets, teeter totters, and cap guns with gun powder filled paper rolls that could be (in theory) wrapped in tin foil and struck smartly with a ball peen hammer, producing an ear ringing bang, just to name a few things, provided endless hours of fun. And what boy hasn’t been shot or at least shot at with a BB gun by the neighborhood psychopath in training? Wait, what? Hashtags?
Hashtags, or number signs as we used to call them back in the day until they were rebranded as pound signs(?), are a way to categorize, group, or sum up a tweet. I wanted to use the diatribe above to contrast the last few generations, the most recent of which will not know of a time when there was no social media. My kids were pioneers in the social media era with myspace pages. And although it still exists, I checked, myspace was swept into obscurity by the Facebook tsunami. Next was Twitter, with the aforementioned hashtag. Now, there’s Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, and many others I don’t care to know about. STAY OFF MY LAWN! Until the recent overuse of the hashtag on Facebook, the core or theme of a tweet was encapsulated in the handful of characters after the #. What I like about Twitter is its 140 character limit, forcing “tweeters” to get to the point ASAP, with little fluff. And even though many, if not most, tweets are inane and inconsequential, it is a great way to boil down a thought, premise, opinion, or theory to its essential core. In a broader perspective, we would all do well to separate the dross from the gold in our own communication with others, discarding that which is useless and focusing on what matters. That’s not to say that there’s no place for light-hearted fun, but we cannot constantly allow the important things in life to be crowded out by stuff that has no positive impact. We need to live with intentionality, engaging others, and connecting them to the purpose and plan for which the Lord created them. #MadeInHisImage
(Click “Stand on Firmer Ground” for deeper look into #Hashtag.)