Sure, nearly six billion people do it. But I for one am dealing with a serious case of burnout. And I know I'm not alone.
Ok, I admit: The question that serves as the headline for this post seems on the surface a bit absurd, if not downright crazy. Any day now seven billionth person is about to communicate with friends, and that's a population more than 21 times that of the United States.
The reason I ask if communicating with friends is dying is simple: It’s because my kids have pretty much stopped doing it. Just the other day my 16 year old son told me he rarely does it, because he’s tired of other people’s whiny life updates. He’d rather spend his time reading books and discovering new things (when he’s supposed to be doing his homework, naturally). In other words, he’d like to do his own random discovery, rather than rely on his friends to do it for him.
My 13-year-old daughter, a much more social creature, was all over communicating with friends for the first two years she tried it.
But lately she has discovered scrapbooking, where she can build her own scrapbook and find others that interest her – without getting all this stuff she doesn’t care about pushed at her by her parents, relatives, and assorted friends.
In other words, the generation that follows Gen Z has grown disenchanted with the very nature of communicating with friends. And I gotta say, I’m starting to see their point.
More and more when I am bored and looking for distraction in real life I go first to newspaper or TV. Last night, for example, I spent a ridiculous amount of time following the CNN coverage of 47 percent and all the snark that erupted from Mitt Romney’s “off the cuff, inelegant” comments about the half of America he apparently detests.
I was listening to national news anchors, whose voice and ability to stay fair and balanced are far superior to the local TV station experience (and miles ahead of any political coverage I ever get from my friends and family). The TV remote let me quickly change channels without having to buy a new television set or turn it off and on again. So I spent a solid hour skimming through news bytes and listening in-depth to those that piqued my interest.
Your kids as just finding out that people that talk too much about themselves are boring. On facebook there is an army of people ready to post what they ate for breakfast, what they saw on TV, and so on. These people just want an audience to watch what they are doing (mostly uninteresting stuff heh).
That army is also on Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, Wordpress, LiveJournal, MySpace, and any other free website that allows them to publish themselves for others to publicly see. That doesn't mean that those services aren't useful to those of us who have friends that aren't narcissists.
If your Facebook news feed (or your Twitter stream, or whatever else) is full of nothing but self-indulgent crap, then maybe you should find some better people to be friends with?
Actually I found that most people acted like they had an alter ego. When they are online they are boring, but when you meet them personally they are nice people.
I'm pretty happy with my friends, I just don't feel the need for something like facebook and the need for filtering stuff that I never had to filter before.
For those that find facebook to be so great, more power for them.
Not to mention the "braggart" economy that is springing up. People are now broadcasting their lives - truly or falsely - across social networks to increase others opinions of them.
Sure, nearly six billion people do it. But I for one am dealing with a serious case of burnout. And I know I'm not alone.
Ok, I admit: The question that serves as the headline for this post seems on the surface a bit absurd, if not downright crazy. Any day now seven billionth person is about to communicate with friends, and that's a population more than 21 times that of the United States.
The reason I ask if communicating with friends is dying is simple: It’s because my kids have pretty much stopped doing it. Just the other day my 16 year old son told me he rarely does it, because he’s tired of other people’s whiny life updates. He’d rather spend his time reading books and discovering new things (when he’s supposed to be doing his homework, naturally). In other words, he’d like to do his own random discovery, rather than rely on his friends to do it for him.
My 13-year-old daughter, a much more social creature, was all over communicating with friends for the first two years she tried it.
But lately she has discovered scrapbooking, where she can build her own scrapbook and find others that interest her – without getting all this stuff she doesn’t care about pushed at her by her parents, relatives, and assorted friends.
In other words, the generation that follows Gen Z has grown disenchanted with the very nature of communicating with friends. And I gotta say, I’m starting to see their point.
More and more when I am bored and looking for distraction in real life I go first to newspaper or TV. Last night, for example, I spent a ridiculous amount of time following the CNN coverage of 47 percent and all the snark that erupted from Mitt Romney’s “off the cuff, inelegant” comments about the half of America he apparently detests.
I was listening to national news anchors, whose voice and ability to stay fair and balanced are far superior to the local TV station experience (and miles ahead of any political coverage I ever get from my friends and family). The TV remote let me quickly change channels without having to buy a new television set or turn it off and on again. So I spent a solid hour skimming through news bytes and listening in-depth to those that piqued my interest.