The Social Life

It’s late at night and my phone buzzes notifying me that the European market is opening higher than expected. By the morning when my phone’s alarm goes off, I already have missed a whole mess of updates from news and emails to a group text discussing a friend’s upcoming birthday.  I’ve might have been asleep for 7 hours but I haven’t for one moment been disconnected from the world.

When I was younger this world of connection, online and mobile was just coming into existence. My dad had a “Zack Morris phone” that was only for emergencies and I was never allowed to touch.  Going online meant listening to the computer dial up the Internet, and having that nice lady at AOL tell you “You have mail”. Music was still bought in stores, I had to call my friends home landline to talk to them, and getting mail (like envelopes with stamps on them) was the only way to send communications like Birthday and Christmas cards.

The world we live in is completely different fro the one I was born into (and I am not that old). Social media has been the main topic now many years, and while some people say is will lead to the end of our civilization with less people talking to each other and building relationships; I tend to see it differently. Yes, I do think how addicted we are to social media and being connected 24/7 is an issue (see New York times article "The Joy of Quiet"). But other than needing to find a balance, I believe that social media will bring people closer together and make an ever-expanding world feel more personal instead of vastly impersonal.  Social media is now and what people harness it’s power for is the future, and I think it’s a bright one.