Goodbye Social Media!

In the past few years social media has boomed. We've gone from old school AIM (aol instant messenger) to MySpace to Facebook to pinterest and everything in between. They have all had their benefits and drawbacks but are we arriving at a place in life where social media is actually interfering with life as opposed to enhancing it? I think so.

It's becoming for many a new addiction. People feed off of how many followers they have or if they have more "friends" than a co-worker. Their break just isn't complete without checking twitter to see what some celebrity is doing. I was slow to pick up the social media scene and even I catch myself saying, "I'll go to sleep after I check Facebook." Instead of playing with our children we are playing with TweetDeck, trying to be clever and witty.

Maybe we think we are liked more because we have more followers. I think we are so obsessed with getting approval from everyone that we are losing approval from our loved ones. We put a movie on for our children for "family movie night" and almost instantly my husband and I pick up our phones. We aren't doing anything as a family. I remember complaining to my husband that watching tv didn't mean we were spending quality time with each other and the same goes for media. When someone that you love and cares about thinks you are supposed to be spending time with them but you're on your phone, you are communicating that your phone is more important.

Social Media also gives this sense of not wanting to miss anything and expecting everyone to onow what's going on in our life. Friends have said, "you didn't call and say congrats on (insert random congratulatory worthy event here)." My response, "I'm so sorry, I didn't even know." "well, I put it on Facebook." My mother-in-law made the comment one time that she had to get a Facebook so she new what was going on with our children. Wow, how sad that we don't even call our loved ones anymore to share exciting events. We put on our many social media outlets an expect anyone that "cares" about us to see it.

I heard a report on a random day that my husband left NPR on in my car that was talking about a New England town that has had an outbreak of Tourette's amongst mainly teenage girls. One common factor was the amount of time they all spent using Facebook. Another report was talking about the number of early dementia cases increasing and suggested that it could be linked to the amount of information we are processing through social media and the ease of accessing information via the internet. And yet another report is researching a possible connection between autism and the amount of information expected to process even as small as the color of cars passing you on the road. No wonder ADHD is increasing, our brains are constantly expected to process everything around us so we don't miss anything, or make a mistake, or accidentally hurt someone. That's a lot to expect when you're 40, let alone 5. Our brains don't know how to focus on just one thing anymore.

So many reasons to put an end to the madness that surrounds social media, yet something tells me it'll be just like cigarettes...we know they're bad for us but some of us just can't kick the habit. I for one plan on kicking at least some of my habit. Maybe only using Facebook for mass postings to people that I really would call just for ease. Definitely not using it during daytime hours with my babies around. I imagine I'll be a lot more productive at home and maybe magically find some time to do those things I just can't seem to find the time to do.