For those of you who don't know me, I would love to reintroduce myself. However, it seems extremely conceited of me to blab on and on about myself. If you follow my columns regularly, you'll quickly learn who I am and what I stand for … let me just warn you, though, I'm a very opinionated, through and through Wisconsinite. Now, onto my topic - social networking and how it has, ironically, corrupted social interaction all over the world.
Do you remember when the only mail you received came via the United States Postal Service and, in order to find out what your friends were up to, you had to actually talk to them. Well, thanks to social networks, that's no longer the case. Though I will admit to having every sort of social networking account (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Foursquare, among others) known to man, I am hardly what could be deemed a huge fan of this new craze. Sure, it's fun to upload photos and send messages that arrive in fractions of seconds, as opposed to snail mail. But, as I have found, having a Facebook, MySpace or similar account has led to a breakdown of communication. Face-to-face conversations are becoming fewer and fewer, I, like many others, rarely talk on the phone with my close friends and I can honestly say I've been invited to a wedding via Facebook. Sure, I received a real invitation in the mail some time later, but a group invite served as the Save-The-Date for the event.
Another thing that frustrates me about this new trend is how some people go overboard, thinking that, since they can share information, they have the green light to tell their entire life stories in the form of status updates. Honestly, I don't care if someone is brushing their teeth before they change into their pajamas and curl up with their favorite book before bed. And I certainly don't need an hourly recap that contains every detail of what a person has done every single minute since their last update.
Blogging is another thing that has started to turn my stomach, especially since these so-called experts are blogging about anything and everything, virtually tarnishing the credibility of the journalism profession. Granted, these people are not professionals, they infuriate me because there are people out there who actually rely on blogs for news. Oddly enough, for the past three years, I have tried, semi-unsuccessfully, to maintain my own blog. I started it as I approached my college graduation, more so because I figured it would be an easy way to keep my friends in the loop during my two-year stint in Wyoming. Needless to say, I never anticipated Facebook to become the social network icon that it has.
But, to think that, when I was born, computers were ginormous machines used by large corporations to store data, it blows my mind at how they have basically become everyday necessities for people around the globe. I remember back in elementary school how massive the systems were and how things had to be saved on floppy disks. As I type this column on my laptop in the kitchen of my parent's house, I can't wait to see where technological advances will take us in 20 more years.
Jennie Oemig
Staff Writer
Trempealeau County Times
No comments:
Post a Comment