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| One of the many photos taken of me texting at the table. |
Lately
there have been dozens of articles, studies, and blog posts about
social media basically destroying our social lives. Of course we’re all
guilty of standing in the corner at a party tweeting until we see
someone we know, texting at the dinner table, posting every single thing
we do and see. Why have we become so obsessed with checking in, posting
photos and sharing everything we do? Hey, this is what I’m watching,
eating, this is who I’m with, this is what I'm wearing, this is where I’m going and this is what
I’m going to do when I get there. Why are we tweeting at someone we see
instead of walking over and saying hello? Why are we making a Facebook event for every hang
out or get together? Will we run out of things to tweet about because we've stopped having "real" experiences?
I
don’t know if everyone else is having some sort of social breaking point as well, but the
more social I was online, the more anti-social I was becoming offline. I started
closing up, putting up walls, and living in my own world. Something had
to give. I
remember as a kid I had to drink two glasses of water for every soda I
had and I needed to be outside for an hour for every half hour of
television watched or video games played. Maybe there should be some
sort of guidelines for online and offline relationships. For every tweet
or status update you have to have a face to face interaction or for
every Facebook event attended you have to call a friend up and make a
spontaneous plan. Shouldn't balancing our lives be common sense?
It's time to stop being so socially anti-social. Let's treat every check-in, tweet,
post, add, and photo as a personal interaction. If you wouldn’t share it with the
person sitting next to you, don’t share it will the whole world online.
If you wouldn't walk up to someone at a party hand them your business card and just walk away, don't add someone randomly online without at least introducing yourself. I’m not saying to ditch the digital world, there just needs to
be more balance in our social lives and social interactions. Let’s not
forget about the real world. They say life is short, but we should stop focusing on life as
140 characters or less.
