Pluses and Minuses of Facebook & Technology

If you use the internet daily, log on to Facebook or Twitter, you know that it can be addictive.   We all log on to check the status of friends, see what random events are being initiated on the these pages, and to add our own two cents sometimes to the plethora of information out there.  As soon as we log off, however, there is a desire hours or even a few minutes later to see if anything changed, or if someone responded to a post of ours.  I will be the first to admit, it takes discipline on my part not to fall into this trap.  The tweets that spread like wildfire, supposedly indicative of our complex thought process and actions simply piques the interest of others, anxiously waiting for a follow up or some new abbreviated thought or comment.  In general, most of this information is utterly useless.   How does it impact our lives to read that someone is having trouble falling asleep or just finished baking some cookies?  For all this useless information and the addictive nature of these programs and the internet itself, there is a lot of good that stems from them.

To find the good, all we have to do is look back over the past few months and look at the overturned governments in Tunisia and Egypt whose revolutions started via Facebook.  There is a definite plus to these programs, allowing people to organize charitable events, initiate government protests, or simply re-connect with distant family.  The internet is capable of dispersing knowledge across all borders, educating those in countries without access to otherwise mainstream media and promoting discussion amongst otherwise alienated sections of our global population.  These positive effects that the internet has, however, pale in comparison to the extravagant amount of useless information that is posted, tweeted, and reported about. 

The addictive side of these programs can be harmful in the long run.  By continuously "logging on", we first of all make it that much harder to log off and second we distance ourselves from the very real and personal relationships that we maintain off the internet.  By promulgating our pseudo relationships on the internet, we neglect the very people in our lives who have the capability of making the greatest impact on us.  The longer we let these real life relationships lapse, the harder it is actually be involved in them.  Now I am not saying that people should abhor the internet and disavow use of it permanently, but as with anything, there must be a certain amount of moderation that must be placed on our use of it, not by some outside source, but by ourselves. 

There was an interesting article in the NYTimes about the film festival South by Southwest in which it talks about movies based on people unable to disconnect or "log off" and what happens when they do.  In addition, at the festival there were forums and discussions based on social media and questioning whether it is really bringing us closer together or driving us farther apart.  There was an estimate from a presenter there that about a trillion dollars of business is lost every year due to use of these online social media programs.  It is definitely worth a read, and since your "logged in" right now, you might as well check it out.

There are many more beneficial activities we could be engaging in throughout the day instead of constantly logging in to Facebook or Twitter to supposedly "connect" with others.  Where is the that connection?  Does reading about someone's horrible coffee they just bought at Starbucks really going to promote a conversation between you and that person?  How does reading about someone's horrible day and what they have to do impact my life?  I think on a certain level, all of those who are "addicted" to Facebook and Twitter know that they really don't gain anything real or substantive by being logged on constantly.  Yet these programs appeal to many peoples' desire to spy on other peoples lives or even a little voyeurism in the sense that the people who post these comments and pictures have no idea who is actually viewing them. 

Instead of logging on constantly, why not focus on our own shortcomings and what we need to work on to better ourselves.  Often times it seems, we use the internet and all its trappings to escape real life and the real work it takes to get through it successfully.  If we don't work on ourselves and devote our time instead to maintaining our trivial status on the internet, where will we end up?  We can not progress unless we devote time to improving ourselves and those around us.  Lets take time to focus our energies on conversations off the internet with real life human beings, not some quick picture and short line supposedly representative of a person.  Unless we can pull ourselves off the internet for extended periods of time, our society will languish.   It may sound like a dismal point of view, but it could turn out to be true.  Lets try something here, after your done reading this, shut off your computer and go talk to someone.  Talk to them for at least five minutes and see how they are doing, what is going on in their life, and where they are headed.  You never know, it may inspire you to do it more often.  (And when your done with that conversation, don't go tweet it all over the internet).  Lets get more involved in real life, not a pseudo life on the internet.