Janet CollinsThe Neverending Phenomenon of Social Networking
December 29th 2009 21:40
It has really been a decade where the internet and all those other things that it has spurned have taken over our lives. Think Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and of course YouTube. We can connect, share and link up all so easily. Then there is Twitter.
Google has gone from strength to strength. Facebook is now the largest social networking site of all with 350 million users at the beginning of December and heading quickly towards the 500 million mark.
Twitter is one that I have never understood, but it has eventually grown out of all proportion. Some of this can most definitely be attributed to the high profile people internationally using it that has driven its membership to new heights.. When Ashton Kutcher very publicly raced towards his record 30,000 followers early in the year, Oprah was doing her own little peddling and gathering a lot of followers as she took to Twitter for everyone, everywhere to follow her.
I do not want to hear what anyone is doing minute-by-minute nor would I particularly think anyone was interested in what I was doing every minute of the day. The phenomenon persists however and as we go into this new decade it is showing no sign of slowing down.
While many parents have boarded the bandwagon for a lot of reasons – keeping up with their kids, finding out what they are doing or even finding out what is and what not is accessible on the net, there are many others who have climbed aboard because of what it can offer them.
Travelling is one of the reasons where instantaneous response and sharing photos can be really advantageous. Distance, as far as communication goes, does not matter at all. Aside from that, many retirees have amost saturated community organised internet classes and many of these students have never used a computer in their life.
There are many critics of this new form of socialising - or should I say, social networking - but if we go beyond the questions about internet friends and exposure to some unsavoury stuff, the internet has turned our lives around - well, many of us anyway.
Earlier in the year, I wrote a post about Ivy Bean, who at 104 and in a nursing home in Bradford, England, had become such a social networker that she had managed to gather the maximum 5,000 friends on Facebook and 27,000 followers on Twitter, leaving her 80 something daughter well behind.
Though not many people of Bean's age would even attempt to learn computer skills, there are some not far behind her who have taken to it with a passion. It transcends age and class. It connects young and old. It doesn't matter where the people we want to connect up with live (mostly) because we can reach them from a simple touch of a computer button.
The social networking is such a good thing overall. A long lost flatmate of mine found me on Facebook after she had settled in a country far away from Australia. It can be great for that reason alone. It makes the distance between us so much smaller.
Is this obsession with computers good or bad? Some would say we have become all too obsessed about sitting at our screens in all our off time and not seeing the world around us. Has it replaced the good old telephone chat or the personal networking that was so important before? Yes, it has probably contributed to a lot of that. But there are highs as well as lows and I dare say the ability to keep in contact, no matter the distance between us has to win out overall.
As for the parents and kids, the social networking can be both good and bad. Kids and teenagers often want their own forum and they are now realizing that parents can invade that too easily now. In fact this new found exposure can stop us from hiding a lot from those we would rather not share all of our lives with.
Despite that, I can’t see anything replacing this too much in the near future. Whether you love it or you hate it, it is here to stay. For all of us.
This is a funny TV commercial from telco Verizon, in the US that just about sums up that invasion of parents into their teenagers’ lives. Enjoy!
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Comment by Janet Collins
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I also think it is pretty shallow or even way of the mark to judge a person's "popularity" by the number of friends they have on Facebook. Silly really.
Keeping a small circle is a good idea, I think.
Thank you.
Janet