By now, the novelty of email, IM and texting has worn off and you’ve realized the value of face-to-face connections over digital contact. Still, digital is allowing us to make and keep connections we wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. Think: following a respected colleague located on the other side of the country on Twitter. Or joining a wine forum to talk about your grape passion with other enthusiasts and experts.
I refuse to let my husband buy a Wii because I feel that his time (read: our time) is better spent engaging away from the television. I’ve heard that after you’ve been playing the video game for a while, a message comes onto the screen suggesting you stop playing the game and go outside for a few minutes. Does anyone really stop and do this? Or is it one of those annoying hiccups you wish you could disable altogether?
I have shunned Facebook because too many other social networks and blogs already keep me online more hours of my wakeful day than any other activity (outside of my real job). I know that adding another to my feed could wreck havoc on my real world relationships. I mean do I really want to see what that girl in my high school Calculus class is up to these days? If I barely talked to her then, I doubt we’d form any lasting bond years later. Yes, all my friends have a page. But when we have to resort to connecting on line instead of getting together for a girls’ night out, I’ll find new friends.
Now we see brands tugging on our emotions in a different way. Some have begun capitalizing on that human-digital connection by encouraging us to “take a break.”

Take the new campaign from Dentyne. A banner ad intrigued me to see what the “make face time” tagline was all about. Their microsite gives you three minutes to explore all their messages about human contact. One print ad shows a couple kissing, calling it “The original instant message.” Another labels two girlfriends hugging with “Friend request accepted.” The site also includes an email application that allows you to send a note to a friend asking them to meet offline. Oddly enough the clock stops when you are watching their commercials. It continues when you venture into any of the other entertainment areas such as the “face time request.”
It really all makes perfect sense. I mean who researches or buys gum online? It’s just ironic that print ads and television ads drive you to a website that then tries to convince you that you shouldn’t be there. Is the brand wasting their money?

Do we really need brands to tell us to log off, shut the laptop, put our phone away and talk to our husbands, wives, kids, parents, friends, colleagues, store clerk? Do you find this annoying or trite?
Tell us. Then step away from your digital device and go have coffee with your neighbor.
Sarah Jo Sautter