My So(cial)-Called Life

Matt Marino
Aug 8, 2017 · 7 min read

Time to focus on the “life” part.

Hello, my name is Matt, and I am reclaiming my life. Intrigued? Read on.


Recently, The Atlantic published an important article by Jean M. Twen titled, “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” In her article (part of a forthcoming book by Twen), the author discusses the premise of post-millennials, who she calls the “iGeneration” (iGen for short), suffering severe mental health issues due to complete digital overload. (By the way, I cannot recommend Twens’s article enough. It’s an excellent read.) While we definitely can see such issues happening with teenagers, one could argue that those same issues, while perhaps not as widespread, have affected older folks, myself included.

Let me first get this out of the way: yes, I am very well aware of the irony that I am writing a digital article about my digital life, but c’est la vie. This also is my perspective, so your actual mileage may vary.


Alrightythen, here we go. For as long as I can remember, I’ve let the digital world run my life and give me more “substance” and involvement than I really have. Sure, I have things going on in my life, but I do sleep, too. In all seriousness, though, it is true: Facebook, Instagram, and — to a lesser degree — Twitter and Snapchat have made me the “popular” person that I sought to be when I was younger (more on that in a sec). Texting has made my communication easy and, for the most part, pain-free. However, I’ve come to realize the danger in all of that: all of the texts and posts and tweets cannot hide the lack of human interaction, and the older you get, the harder it becomes to remedy.

Before I get into the present, here’s a little about my past. I won’t bore you with the details, nor will I bare my soul (just wait for my memoirs), but in short, I was far from the popular kid. I was incredibly antisocial and, even worse, drove people away who may have wanted to befriend me. I was undeniably the shy kid with a target on his back, and boy, did that do wonders for my social life. I had zero close friends, and much of that was my own doing. Looking back on my youth, I cannot tell you why all of that was the case; it just was. Maybe I had social anxiety disorder, or maybe I was just an extremely moody child. Did people like me? I wasn’t sure, but I was a huge skeptic because I lacked self-confidence. Who am I kidding? I hated my attitude. Whatever the issue really was, my lack of friends plagued me throughout grammar school, high school, and my freshman year in college. It was only when I transferred to a small college in Virginia that I found I could be myself and be accepted for it. (Shout-out to Mary Wash!) Coming back to New Jersey after college was okay for awhile, but I soon found that my post-college life mirrored my pre-college life. Then, the digital world exploded, and I went all in like it was going out of style within a year.

MySpace (remember that?) and Facebook were a godsend for me, and it stayed like that for a very long time. Slowly but surely, my MySpace and Facebook contacts grew, and grew, and grew. Fast forward to 2017, and my Facebook “friends” list is well over 1,000 people, even though I probably have seen less than one percent of my “friends” in the past few years. (As for MySpace, does Justin Timberlake still own it? But I digress.) Before you pass judgment, please know that in no way am I discounting the connections we’ve made via Facebook or other sites. In fact, it is through Facebook that I reconnected with many of my grammar school (yes, GRAMMAR SCHOOL!) classmates from days gone by. We have had some great times together, and I gladly will star in an ad for Facebook acknowledging that fact. I really love seeing other people’s news and updates, too. For me, I came to rely on social media as a communication tool and, yes, a way for me to post random updates, thoughts, and other personal musings and to interact with people. Texting, too, was great. I wouldn't have to see people eye-to-eye but rather could type without being judged “in person” for something. How lucky for someone like me!


Unfortunately, while I always have emphasized the importance of communication with family, friends, and significant others, my digital life has turned my actual life into a complete clusterbleep. I often cannot look people in the eye when having a conversation. In some ways, I find it hard to believe, and somewhat hilarious, that I’ve been teaching for 13 years; I am in front of people all day, every day, communicating (or trying to) the wonders of literature to teenagers. Even with that, though, I remember times when students complained that I wasn’t looking them in the eye, and they were absolutely right. I have become lazy in initiating or responding to emails, texts, and other messages, some of them involving very important matters. I have posted updates or links or articles without thinking of how they would be received by others or whether I really needed to tell people how (this topic) or (that topic) either pleased me or pissed me off. Worst of all, I have damaged relationships with people I know because of ill-advised comments, lack of communication, or just plain ol’ laziness or stupidity. When it comes to relationships, all of the dating apps in the world don’t mean anything if people refrain from talking to each other in person and instead rely on texting to communicate with each other. Yes, we live in a texting world, but the last time I checked, iPhones still have their “phone” app. I wish I could undo much of my digital life to this point, but I can’t. As I said, many of my challenges with the digital world are rooted in the fact that my actual life has been devoid of human contact and social interaction. Yeah, I’m still grappling with my childhood demons. People who know me might be reading this and saying, “But Matt, you usually (and I mean usually) sound happy, content, full of activity, etc.” Or, “Matt, you’re always doing something cool!” Or maybe you’re reading this and thinking, “Matt, I saw right through the BS,” to which I say: good work! Listen — I can converse with the best of ‘em, and I have a story to tell all the time, but there’s a lot going on with the man behind the curtain. I do acting on the side, and let’s just say that the recent stretch in my life has equated to all the world being a stage. Just sayin’.

While I cannot erase the past, what I CAN do — what we all can do — is re-learn the art of human interaction. Now, I am not naive enough to believe that I will just give up texting, Facebooking, tweeting, and Instagramming altogether. However, I — and all of us — need to remember that we have mouths, voice boxes, and minds, and we should use all of them as much as we can. We have eyes, and looking at a face when conversing is pure gold. We have ears, too, so our listening skills always are ripe for improvement. Most of all, we have desires, loves, hates, and so many more feelings and emotions that sometimes become suppressed by texts, emojis, and retweets. Do you have a smartphone? Great! Rather than having a long texting conversation, use what the Jetsons used: video calling! (Seriously, was that show way ahead of its time or what?) Pretty much all video calling is free, and it gives you a chance to see each other live and in person. I don’t use video calling nearly enough, but that definitely will change. See, that’s the beauty of it all: I still, and we all still, have time to reverse the trends! Whether Boomer or Millennial, Generation X, Y, Z, or…uh…Alpha(?), to quote The Rolling Stones, “Time is on [our] side, yes it is.”


I will say this: I love my technology and try to use it as productively as I possibly can. I also will never be the popular guy I always wanted to be, and no amount of texting or social media will change that. However, I am at peace with it because for me, having human contact through family, friends, relationships, and the like is most important at this point in my life. Reading, writing, and expressing our thoughts, feelings, and emotions in person and/or in long form far outweigh a simple text. I have other areas of my life I need to work on, and I am taking steps to do that, as should we all. This all might seem like a midlife crisis (I am 40, after all), but in reality, it is me confronting something that has been brewing for quite awhile. As far as my digital life goes, while I still will have a digital presence, this is me officially taking back what was lost: or in my case, finding the balance that I know is out there. It won’t be easy (I know that for a fact), but it needs to happen, and it will. And if I can do it, so can you.

Hello, my name is Matt, and I am reclaiming my life…!

Matt Marino

Written by

I am an educator, a writer, a grad student, and a decent human being, even if I do root for the Mets and the Jets.

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