June 25, 2013

TED: Rage Against the Minivan

Kristen Howerton is the author of an amazing parenting/adoption blog called Rage Against the Minivan. She’s also a professor of psychology at Vanguard University, and the mother of four beautiful children, two of which are born “the old fashioned way” and two of which are adopted. She recently gave a TED talk, and if you don’t know about TED, this is a bandwagon you need to jump on. TED is a nonprofit devoted to “ideas worth spreading.” TED produces two annual conferences, as well as an incredible online video series, which brings together some of the world’s most innovative thinkers and doers who are “challenged the give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes or less.)”

Kristen’s TED talk, “Social Media: Sucking Time or Saving Lives,” opens with the story of her going to visit her now-son who at the time she was trying to adopt, with her own 6-month old baby in Haiti when the Haiti earthquake struck. She was stuck there, taking care of the two children in a slowly crumbling building, for over a month. She speaks of the diversions that maintained her sanity during this experience, how she was forced to relinquish those diversions and what she learned from that experience about herself and how we as a society use and abuse social media.

Obviously we are a culture ingrained in this. We are a business ingrained in this. We are giving you this message via a blog, posted on a website, which will then be linked to our Facebook and Twitter pages. But Kristen offers some pretty wonderful commentary on how we can check some of our internet time and put it back into real time – a solid reminder of the things that matter and what we should really be depending on.