What ever happened to face-to-face talking? And why do people believe it is necessary to twitter what they are doing every single moment of their day? Should we even have any of these things? I may be a tad nostalgic, but sue me if I prefer speaking to people in the real world.
Above are two instances of people saying that social media - namely Twitter and Facebook - are completely useless or at least need to be toned down. The first talks about a study put on by the University of Chicago who outfitted 205 people with Blackberrys and messaged to ask them about their urges. Social Media was the #1 urge they could not resist, right after smoking and drinking. They were able to resist sexual and spending urges. The scientists attributed their inability to resist to social media's availability.
The second link goes to a girl's rant against Twitter, but she does bring up some good points. Her last one relates the best to my questions. "Twitter makes people anti-social. Why should you have to actually SPEAK to people when they can just read your tweets?"
Conversely, here is a link to an argument for social media.
Garret Pierson argues that those who rant against social media are usually the "emo's" and that:
"The funny thing is mostly the people who do complain about this rant are usually users who have not found a benefit in using Facebook or Twitter and merely have an account just to have one. They maybe update their account once every 2 weeks and has less than 50 friends. However there are your emos and haters who just like to bicker and rant on things."
While we let this flawed logic pass by, lets continue to look at the rest of his argument:
"The main point in displaying these updates are to open up conversations and provide the lead for engagement... [m]ost people don’t realize that this is an excellent way to strike up a conversation and a perfect time to engage so that you are effectively using your Social Network to its full potential. Why let anything go to waste when your not using it at full potential? That’s like buying a [f]ast [e]xpensive [c]ar that just sits in your garage."
I will grant that social media allow that which is in bold, but was that much of an improvement over the old way of doing things? I'm talking about phones, emails, letters, and regular talking! After this, he does make a point I like:
"Now some people may say that some updates are too excessive?
Yes I do agree, some people need to learn The Ultimate Social Media Etiquette Handbook by Tamar Weinberg[.]"
Apparently people needed a handbook to learn regular etiquette for any social interaction, but then again someone came up with the idea in the first place, which would mean that the author got the idea from seeing horrible interaction.
All in all, my point is that while social media is an interesting thing to do, it is hardly a replacement to emails, letters, phones, or regular talking which can do all the same things. Except Farmville.
What are your thoughts?
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