Fearful

At prayer meeting this morning, several men worried that some of their adult children were afraid--afraid to drive, afraid of change, afraid to leave home, or other manifestations. (OK, a worry that you'll hurt somebody when you are still objectively bad at driving isn't crazy.)

We agreed that "The world is ending" trope for grabbing clickbait eyeballs didn't help, and likely the "Mankind is a cancer on the globe" trope didn't tend to enspire confidence.

AVI had thoughts a while back about how people who grew up "in" a partly virtual world valued the virtual relationships far more than those of us who mostly didn't.

An obvious extention to that is "virtual adventuring." Do kids get out less than they used to? My sampling is somewhat biased--we live in a lower middle-class area--but some of the younger kids do get out on their bikes a lot, especially when there are more kids at home.

It's hard to know what you're capable of if you don't experiment with doing a few hard things now and then. "Hard" is relative, of course--I was a rather shy kid and "hard" included striking up conversations with new people. Virtual interactions allow some buffering.

I didn't have smart phones (for half my childhood we didn't have any phone) or computers, but I did have books, and spent a substantial amount of time with those, and not as much time socializing/playing with others as other kids did. I suspect that was partly because I was shy, and partly it reinforced the shyness -- not so confident because not so experienced.

Does "virtual life" sap time and experience from "physical life?" It does seem likelier to restrict your circle of acquaintances. I overhear things in buses and bookstores that I don't run into in my "virtual circle"--such as people who honestly believe they will live long enough for their mind to be downloaded into a computer, or people who believe that Trump staged getting shot at (I gather that the woman had never actually tried to hit anything--gun, bow, or just throwing a rock). And then when you do run into people you don't understand, perhaps you fear?