Social media has got a hold on us

It’s no secret that I have a love/hate relationship with social media especially sites like Facebook which I admit while they can be useful for keeping in touch or reconnecting, are also huge time sucks. I only know 2-3 folks who can take it or leave it, for Lent the Spousal Unit actually took a month long break from all social media and now only checks in with such sites on a sporadic basis. Then there are my two closest and dearest friends, one who has no Facebook, Twitter, or any other type of social media accounts. Funny thing is, his real life job  is a DJ at a medium size radio station in Chicago, the type of gig where you think one might want to occasionally dip a toe in the world of social media. My other best friend uses sites like facebook on a really sporadic basis. She will go months, and I am talking literal months without logging on then she has a week where she is hot and heavy and then she fades away. She recently told me she did that because she knew if she logged on daily she could easily see herself getting caught up and she just did not want to deal with that in her life. I admire the hell out these three because they recognize that while these sites can be valuable they can also be dangerous.

Now for some of you reading this, if you love these sites and don’t feel they are dangerous time drains, more power to you. Maybe I am just weak and need a bit more of your restraint. I will be the first to tell you I have greatly cut down on my consumption of these sites but it still feels like its not enough and that is what I am desperately working on. Why do I care who writes on my wall? While it’s great I reconnected with Suzy from 4th grade what does it mean in my day to day life when we live 1100 miles away from each other? Why do I feel compelled to click on Sonya’s pictures, when the truth is I barely know her and why the hell did I accept her friend request?

Speaking of friend requests, lately it seems like everyone you have ever met wants to be your damn Facebook friend. We didn’t used to exchange phone numbers and our address with folks we barely knew from the coffeehouse yet we now freely accept friend requests from folks we barely know. In many cases allowing people we hardly know, a clear view into our lives as an upfront stalker under the pretense of friendship yet truthfully I find very little friendship happens on Facebook. Of course there are exceptions but how many of us have “friends” who once we accept that request or they accept our request we never hear from them again? I have about 161 friends at present and out of that about 40 are folks who I regularly communicate with, that means 120 folks out there know way more about me than they need to and we are not really friends.

Yet deleting folks in this brave new world is not such an easy thing because somewhere along the line we started taking this shit really serious. I mean if Winnie at the office realizes you deleted her, it might make for some awkward staff meetings and god forbid you delete your second cousin once removed, it could be war. Family members upset at others because of the shit they post, innocently click that you like a group and all of a sudden people are making value judgments about you complete with FB posses to set you straight. Mind you I am talking about grown folks. In the past several weeks while laid up I have seen friends arguing over unschooling, immigration reform and a multitude of other issues. It’s like Facebook brings out the worst in us not the best. How did a tool that started as a way to connect become a soap box, a way to bully one another? Yes, when we can’t accept that a friend has a different view than us, and we feel the need to correct their thinking we are engaging in a form of bullying. Why does it matter that Jennifer thinks spanking her kids is fine? As long as she is not breaking any laws or spanking my kids, its none of my business.

Then there are the masterminds behind facebook, with each “upgrade” to their program, they are giving away more and more of our privacy. Just yesterday they had a flap where it turned out so called private chats were not private…who here has not engaged in a chat talking a little greasy about someone on your friends list? If you haven’t well good for you. Now we actually have to work hard to keep our private lives private, we can no longer opt in to sharing we must opt out and how many of us remember to do that? I am amazed at the number of folks with private profiles yet all their pictures are public. I doubt they mean for that to happen but unless you take time to make the photos private I can see a lot about you. If you are like me you got on Facebook as a way to connect with folks who are really your friends and perhaps to stay in touch with family that is far away. I know I have a lot of photos posted as it allows my brother and a few others to see how the girl child is growing, yet I damn sure don’t want our family photos available to all. There have been a few reported cases of FB pictures showing up in places outside of the Facebook albums that the owners have put them in.

Thanks to the sheer number of details we give away about ourselves its no wonder we have sites like spokeo.com that can put together fairly complete profiles about us even down to our interests. I recently stumbled on to Spokeo and was stunned; on the other hand I am just giving away a great deal of details about my life. Then we wonder why identity theft is growing….hello, we are making it possible for scumbags to steak our identities! I am no criminal but how do we know that fellow blogger or other we connect with on Facebook are not? The truth is we don’t and lets just say that knowing a few details about someone is a springboard for finding out more information about someone.

Yet as chilling as this is to me when I write this out, it is still hard to walk away. Why? Because we live in a world when many are plugged in, I have quite a few friends who hate talking on the phone. They don’t do it. We make plans to get together and they are all made online, or else they are not made. It’s to the point that not only do folks not return calls or respond to emails, you must catch them on one of these social media sites.  There are folks that when I talk to them on the phone it feels awkward and I am someone who used to love talking on the phone. I still would but no one does it in my inner circle except for 3-4 folks. So it’s either connecting via social media to stay connected or no connection at all. I thrive on human contact so I stay connected despite desperately wanting to pull the plug. Welcome to 2010 and the cult of social media that has us all under its thumb.

5 thoughts on “Social media has got a hold on us”

  1. You write great thought provoking post. I just spend a while reading lots of your old posts.

    Spokeo is a spooky place, but I am a neighbor oxymoro and the info about me and DH is so wrong it is funny. A big city transplant to someplace pretty remote. I surely don’t match the local profile.

    But I can say it will make me more careful in the future, and glad I did decide to delete my facebook page. I know info given away never really leaves but I got tired of that constantly changing privacy policy.

  2. I don’t take Facebook that seriously. At one point, I was friending any one and everyone. Now I only friend folks I want to be friends with. And leave it at that.

    Spokeo is indeed spooky-o.

  3. This was hilarious. It’s like a lot of inventions, they turn into something people wish they never had but can’t stop using.

    Right now I’m sitting here shooting the breeze with my daughter and let her read your post to get her feedback, and she was going, “uh-huh, that’s true!” Every few months she comes home talking about some fist fight from FB, but as you said, it’s not just the kids.

    A friend of mine has two friends, a couple, and their break was very public thanks to their status on FB followed by folks taking sides in what really was no one’s business, then arguing with each other over who done who wrong. This culminated in a shoving match between the couple and two other people at a party.

    How old was everyone involved? In their 30s and 40s.

  4. I finally got on Facebook last year after years of refusing to do it. My husband still refuses to join. It’s been a nice way to keep in touch with family and friends but I try not to take it too seriously.

    Now, that spokeo site you mentioned is indeed spooky-Oh. I’m sufficiently creeped out.

  5. I agree totally with you, but I myself choose not to involve myself in the social sites. I do not have a lot of time on my hand but the time I have I would like to spend reading something to provoke something positive. I do feel that we as people have stronger feelings about things because there is no face, everybody is BIG, and BAD when they are behind that desk. In short mostly cowards, cyberbullying is everywhere. It’s in the schools, and it’s affecting not only kids but adults. But I myself choose not to indulge because simply if I haven’t talked to you in the past 20 years there is a reason. Plain and simple you are not a friend you WERE an associate. That’ s about the best way I can put it. Sad but true, if I have your number 20 years later YOU are. So as for facebook, twitter, myspace, and all the other social sites (these are the only ones I know) I’ll leave them for the more experienced blogger. Nice chatting wit cha!!

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