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Let's talk about social media for a minute. With Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, have we forgotten how to be social? At one time in our lives we used to pick up the phone and talk to people verbally, have an actual conversation with them. But now, we send them messages, sometimes less than 140 characters. We say things like "happy birthday," "merry Christmas", "happy new year," sorry your grandmother died, thinking that now it is acceptable to be social without actually being social.
Facebook, that's the one that's grabbing everyone's attention, so I think I'll start with that one first. Never in my life have I see more relationships get ruined by a simple post by a social media site, like Facebook. This may have happened on many other sites, but this is the first time it's visibly public. For example, "its complicated" that's your first clue there's something wrong with the relationship. People are posting extremely personal information online for the whole world to see, stuff that you whisper in closed quarters, yet they will freely post it on Facebook. More jobs have been lost because of Facebook postings, because for some reason people feel that by posting online that no one will actually read it. Well in fact, everyone reads it, and so on, and so on. You would never post an image of you shooting up cocaine or smoking crack, yet you would post a picture of you passed out with alcohol next to you, and caption it hahahahaha "I was drunk." And believe it or not anything you post on Facebook could come back to haunt you, legally or personally. Many jobs search the internet now looking for information about you. And no matter how private you make it, someone will find it.
Now let's talk about online bullying, or what I like to call MySpace Gangsters. Sorry Tom, no disrespect man, but they are the people who think because they're anonymous they can say to anybody what they feel. How many times I have been called the N word by people I have never met in my life. All they have to go off of is a photo of me and instantly portray me with whoever they want to be. They make verbal threats, innuendos, and post comments to other people saying negative things thinking they could get away with it. And often they do. Unfortunately this social media thinking as made it into their schools. Our kids are being cyber bullied, and other students are posting negative comments about other students that are harmful. This has led to some students committing suicide.
The point I'm trying to make is this, in this world of social media many of us are not very social. In fact some of us are down right mean to each other hiding behind our computer screens. Remember this everything you do online does not always stay on line it may end up knocking on your door, and it may not be so social. Welcome to a new decade!
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Just remember, try to help someone this week. Donate food to your local food bank or make a momentary contribution to a homeless shelter in your neighbourhood. Whatever you do this week, take time out to make a difference.
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