W.A.I.T-Rethinking why we share online

W.A.I.T. is the word that flashed through my mind this morning as my thumb hovered over the “post” button. I had just found a quote I loved and, almost automatically, reached for my phone to share it. Then the acronym I’d learned during my coaching training last year appeared in my mind:

W.A.I.T – Why Am I Talking?

For some reason, this simple question landed differently today. It made me pause, phone in hand, and ask myself a new version of it:

Why am I posting this?

What came to me next was how truly magical a real human connection feels. That moment of sitting with someone, listening empathetically, eyes glowing, sharing something that will never be repeated in quite the same way. I guess that’s what we are as human beings – fundamentally social creatures meant to look into another’s eyes, into another’s soul. To hear and share laughter, to feel the ease or unease in another’s presence. Not just to react to a notification ping.

And yet, so much of our human connection now runs through screens. Social media lets us share our breakthroughs, beautiful moments, achievements such as graduations, new jobs, successful projects, trips, and everyday joys in seconds. Undoubtedly, this has opened up tremendous possibilities for staying in touch across the globe, celebrating each other from afar, and finding and reconnecting with our communities wherever we are.

At the same time, it’s worth pausing to ask:

What is happening to the way we connect? And why are we sharing what we share?

These questions might sound minute, but they actually change how we show up online. Just as we pause to ask ourselves, “Why am I talking?”, we can also ask ourselves:

Why am I posting this? Am I sharing to connect, or to be validated? Have I really been in this moment, enjoying it, or am I creating it?

It is surprisingly relatively easy to unknowingly slide through life without noticing, especially when we move quickly from living the moment to documenting it. I, too, have been a victim quite a few times: I’ve caught myself going for a walk or a hike and thinking about the photo first. A picture of that beautiful, perfect shot of sunset, that wonderful landscape, and “the” everything that amazes me. Or I sit with a friend, and without thinking, we both reach for our phones to document how lovely that desert is. Sometimes we watch a child play on a phone camera and feel thrilled that they know how to use it so young. And we let them explore a bit longer. Before we know it, their other senses are deprived.

As a pedagogue, I have also experienced firsthand how screens change children's lives, from listlessness to perceptual disorders. You see, when screens are present, and children use them longer than necessary, there is, more often than not, less spontaneous, imaginative play and fewer opportunities to argue, reconcile, or learn to be together with other children. And my favourite one is “the lesser the boredom, the lesser the creativity.”

And yes, there is indeed a kind of magic that hooks children to those screens, because every time I entered a room full of children on screens, they all looked so calm, at peace, and in total balance until you took those screens away. Then the missing bit of “the rich, messy learning that comes from being fully with one another” becomes clearly observable. This is also true for adults-they too feel a version of this as well, experienced in a form of being in the same room with other adults and not really being together because our attention is split among the person in front of us, the screen, and the ping.

My thinking is, "we still can’t actually blame social media, especially since we all know that sharing online has real value in helping us stay in touch, encourage one another, and find a language or a community that meets our diverse needs and experiences."

The invitation is to become more conscious by asking ourselves the following questions before we post:

Why am I posting? Am I connecting, or performing? Have I actually lived this moment? If no one saw this, would it still matter?

From there, we can choose more consciously and intentionally to take the photo and post it later, after we’ve been present in the moment; to feel proud and celebrate offline before we share; or perhaps to let some moments remain private and unposted. We can also use our online spaces to start conversations worth having by asking fundamental questions, responding with curiosity, and sharing not only the polished parts of our lives but also the unpolished edges and what we are learning.

Perhaps the question Why am I talking? Why am I sharing? Can guide us back to presence, connection, and the genuine magic of being with another person or simply with a moment. Back to that fundamental nature of a real, deeply social, interconnected being.