I should probably be living in another decade, not this one with all the social media. Doesn't anyone else find it exhausting and invasive to be in contact with people all the time?
This is why I don't own a smartphone with an internet connection. Of course there are a lot of useful features like GPS and the ability to get information about all the restaurants in a 10 mile radius, but I can actually survive with them. And despite persistent badgering from every single person I know I refuse to install Whatsapp on my phone. Look at it this way, people did quite well before cell phones were made.
Technology is taking over our lives. Almost nothing is private anymore. Its great to share, but it's come to a point where we think a memory is wasted if we don't take photos and write about it and post it for everyone to see, but what we don't realize is that maybe we're not living the moment itself, and the memory will stay just as a long-forgotten photo we'll probably never see again rather than in our minds.
It's also very irritating when people are fiddling with their phones at social gatherings. Fine, you may be a little bored, but the objective of a social gathering, like a lunch out with friends or a dinner with family is to communicate, or make an effort.
It's actually ironical that social media, while enabling us to be closer to people is actually distancing us from them. When someone is on our friend list, we become complacent. Because we are already tagged as friends. Why do anything more?
Other than that, it's tiring. It's too much. One social network is enough for me, and I simply can't be bothered to make Twitter and Tumblr and Instagram and a thousand other accounts, just because everyone else is doing it.
I don't want to be accessible all the time. If people really want to contact me, they will. If I want to contact anyone, I will. I need to have an excuse for not talking to people when I don't feel like it, or when I'm doing something else and that's impossible to do if I'm visible 'online' all the time.
I'd rather have a real life and not a dominant virtual one. There is a virtual me, but it's not a copy of the real me. I want to live for the moment, and not for a photo or status update or a photo, and make real memories stored in my real self than memories made for the sake of my virtual life. It's not a very easy distinction to make, but once you think about it, you'll start to understand what I mean.
This is why I don't own a smartphone with an internet connection. Of course there are a lot of useful features like GPS and the ability to get information about all the restaurants in a 10 mile radius, but I can actually survive with them. And despite persistent badgering from every single person I know I refuse to install Whatsapp on my phone. Look at it this way, people did quite well before cell phones were made.
Technology is taking over our lives. Almost nothing is private anymore. Its great to share, but it's come to a point where we think a memory is wasted if we don't take photos and write about it and post it for everyone to see, but what we don't realize is that maybe we're not living the moment itself, and the memory will stay just as a long-forgotten photo we'll probably never see again rather than in our minds.
It's also very irritating when people are fiddling with their phones at social gatherings. Fine, you may be a little bored, but the objective of a social gathering, like a lunch out with friends or a dinner with family is to communicate, or make an effort.
It's actually ironical that social media, while enabling us to be closer to people is actually distancing us from them. When someone is on our friend list, we become complacent. Because we are already tagged as friends. Why do anything more?
Other than that, it's tiring. It's too much. One social network is enough for me, and I simply can't be bothered to make Twitter and Tumblr and Instagram and a thousand other accounts, just because everyone else is doing it.
I don't want to be accessible all the time. If people really want to contact me, they will. If I want to contact anyone, I will. I need to have an excuse for not talking to people when I don't feel like it, or when I'm doing something else and that's impossible to do if I'm visible 'online' all the time.
I'd rather have a real life and not a dominant virtual one. There is a virtual me, but it's not a copy of the real me. I want to live for the moment, and not for a photo or status update or a photo, and make real memories stored in my real self than memories made for the sake of my virtual life. It's not a very easy distinction to make, but once you think about it, you'll start to understand what I mean.
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