Montag, 5. August 2013

Social Networks (NOT the film about Zuckerberg)

So this is my third post and it's kinda hard to know what I should talk about since I have like no one commenting at the bottom, but whatever. Today I'll talk about something which has consumed almost my whole life since I started knowing that these sort of things existed. And those are SOCIAL NETWORKS.
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Flickr, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc... I'll talk about all these websites and apps which somehow have become another part of our life. And by this I mean that we almost spend 50 % of our time awake tweeting, liking, sharing or texting people on the Internet. Even I wake up at very weird times, like 4 am in the morning, just to see who liked my latest profile picture in Facebook or my latest post in Instagram. Some people say that the amount of tweets we read per day is more or less like we were reading a whole book.
And suddenly I wondered why we did that.
Some people somehow forget about the other problems they have when they are talking with a very good friend in Facebook or they got 100 likes on one photo in Instagram. It somehow brings the auto-esteem up a little bit. I'm not saying that just because your channel in YouTube got a 1000 subscribers, you'll be the most confident guy in the world but if you have been bullied at school or you are like a wallflower in the society, you somehow feel admired, popular and loved on these social networks.
Another reason why we use social networks A LOT is because, at least with me, I'm an immigrant and I can tell you that it's really hard to talk or communicate with our family abroad. Phone calls are really expensive and the normal mail arrives like two months after you sent it. (So if you were pregnant, probably the news about the new coming baby will spread when the child is already born.)  So thanks to these social networks we can simply write an email in Facebook or call through Skype.

But like everything in life, these social networks have also disadvantages.

  1. It's addicting. Obviously you prefer to write to your girlfriend than go and study for tomorrow's test. Do exercise? "No! Why should I if I can stay home and like photos on Instagram?" Go to piano class? "EEhh... A little bit later, it's raining I don't want to get cold. I should better watch videos on YouTube." Drive my sister to the hospital because she has appendicitis? "Mmmm, maybe the day after tomorrow, I have to read what Miley Cyrus has done on Twitter"And so on and so on.
  2. Like you can be bullied in real life you can also get bullied on the net. Cyber-bullying is like the new trend of bullying where you don't have to know each others face just to start insulting, stalking, hating, harassing or simply bullying people on the Internet you don't even know in real life. But this form of bullying is as bad and hurtful as any other form and we need to watch out.
  3. Of course don't forget about the pederasts and morons who are on the Internet just to get late or to earn some money 'cause they didn't study.
  4. Porn sites (for normal people like me, THAT's a huge disadvantage).
  5. Your mood and self confidence is sometimes based on how many followers you got, how many people liked your photo or how many subscribers you have.
In conclusion, social networks can be good, useful or bad tools for life, it depends on how much we rely on them, what role in our lives they play and how we use them.

Keine Kommentare:

Kommentar veröffentlichen