FACEBOOK OR FACE TO FACE

     How much time do you spend on Facebook? I just recently discovered this amazing tool of connecting to people all over the world. Yes, I'm that challenged when it comes to using modern means of information! I am overdoing it, I think, because as soon as I get through all the new posts, I go back to see what else was posted while I wasn't looking! 
     If you read my post about the anniversary dinner that I attended with my husband (silly me, of course he was there: it was our anniversary, after all!), you noticed how a few of our acquaintances

were obsessed with Facebook and their Smartphones. Besides a few very cursory pleasantries, they spent all their time clicking on darn things, taking pictures, posting them and their comments, getting others' comments and news. One of them read aloud the baseball news and had to immediately send a message to a friend that he lost a bet they had on one of the teams! I was tempted to ask their forgiveness for interrupting their full time occupation with Facebook by trying to celebrate my anniversary!
     Am I so old fashioned? Does everyone but me think that we have to spend every minute of our free time with our noses in one technological or social media invention or another? What does it do to the world, to friendships if we let our fingers do the talking, but our hearts stay silent? Forty, fifty years ago I had friends with whom I studied, played, laughed - face to face, walked in the woods, saved dogs and cats, talked - face to face, made them mad - face to face. I love them still and when I called Russia after twenty years of being away from my friends, 

            they recognized my voice right at the first word that I said! Do you know, how precious it was: to know that they also love and remember me even despite thousands of miles that separated us?
     You might say that, on Facebook you also connect to people who are thousands of miles away from you. I myself had experiences of finding some people that I know there. But do they know your voice? Can they see your laughing or crying face and rash to help at least with a word?