Imagine the last time you spent an entire day without checking you Instagram feed or Twitter timeline. Can't remember? Me neither. This is the world we live in. A world full of posts, likes and follows. We live in an age when communicating has taken on a whole new meaning. The social media era altered the way we talk, share information and essentially live our life. Some find this to be a good thing, and others think a little differently.
When you think about it, if everyone uses social media, it must be good thing. Social networks allow us to get information across communities, and even countries, quicker than ever before. You can send a message one second and it is received the next. News outlets can post a breaking news story and have it go viral within minutes. People in the most rural of areas can be heard, even if they're hundreds of miles away from any sort of civilization. Movements have started, trends have begun and friendships have been formed, all because of mobile communication and everything it can do. We use this new world to catch up with old friends, gain new ones and explore the world via the internet.
But, even with the ability to see what someone in France is doing while you're in your living room in Tucson, there are still a few drawbacks to the world of social networking. While most have a Facebook account, this doesn't mean it's an inherently good thing. With communication methods quickly altering, it brings up the issue of the way we connect with people. By this, I mean good, old-fashioned conversations... in person. We've lost a sense of intimacy in our generation with this new way of conversing. If we have to tell someone something, we text them, rather than going to them directly. If there's an issue with a friend, most of us are going to text them about what's wrong, instead of bringing it up when we're physically with them. It seems the most pressing dilemma is wasting time on our phones looking at what other people are doing, instead of focusing on what we're doing. Don't get me wrong, I'm guilty of it too, but it has become so much harder to focus on what you're doing in the moment without checking to see what someone else is doing at the same time.
We have the blessing of sharing information at the drop of a hat, but there also exists the curse of spending our time following others, which makes us forget to enjoy the moment we're in ourselves. There are benefits and drawbacks, positives and negatives. In the end, it's the balance of finding a way to keep up with others, but remembering to live our own life simultaneously. Don't be the person who finally looks up from their screen to find they missed all the fun that they could have had.
