Processed Food and Social Media

I heard an interesting view of social media on a podcast I listened to this week. Tony Federico made the comparison of Facebook/texting/Twitter... to processed food. The points he made were:

Processed Food:

• Humans are built to use food as fuel. We need it to survive.
• Real food is top choice for our bodies to be their best and feel fulfilled.
• Processed food is an altered version of food.
• Highly processed food provides very little nutrition and leaves us craving more.

Social Media:

• Humans are built as relational beings. We need relationships.
• Face to face relationships are top choice for complete fulfillment.
• Social media and texting relationships are altered versions of real relationships.
• Social media and texting relationships are not as fulfilling as real-life relationships and leave us wanting more.

The views the author expressed were not that social media and texting are bad. We all use those tools. They're wonderful ways to stay connected to loved ones and friends, and they provide valuable connections to new people we would never have the opportunity to know otherwise. However, our use of social media and texting should not happen at the cost of live relationships.

The same holds true with processed food. We're not expected to raise our own animals for meat, for example. Some processing is required in order to get food from the field to our tables. But processing of food should be kept to a minimum and real food eaten as much as possible.

I love this analogy. Personally, I hadn't thought much about the health and happiness relationship to relationships. Maybe there's something to be said for our parents' opinions of the younger generations spending too much time with technology. 

If you'd like to listen to this podcast, you can find it here.