Seeing Big

Yesterday, Jan and I were talking about kids and their devices. She had read a study that showed that children who spend a lot of time on iPads and iPhones, playing games and snap-chatting for hours, are more inclined to depression, even suicide.  The study explained how looking at tiny screens can make children less inclined to socialize in person; how they tend to see their friends doing exciting things that they wish they could do; and how the very size of the screen limits what they are looking at.

For example, kids who rely entirely on their phone's GPS may be able to find places, but they don't see the larger map and get a sense of how one place is connected to other places.

Kids are not inclined to see the big picture if all they look at are little pictures.  If "friends" bully them or insult them online, they may be unable to put their mean words in a larger perspective.

I'm remembering a trip Betty and I once made from Texas to Cape Cod.  At that time, twenty years ago, AAA gave travelers a spiral booklet called a TripTyk that showed a portion of the trip at a time.  Of course, you could look at the larger map, but at that time I drove page by page and followed directions.

In driving page by page, you miss the backroads and you miss a sense of the way one state borders another.

As the year 2017 comes to a close, I'm thinking of all the ways I've missed the big picture myself at times, seeing only a portion of the story or the truth of what is.  I use devices and GPS--but the best parts of any day are the times of free exploration of places and points of view.