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Social media has made affirmation an addiction. It has made people create their own "reality shows" where selfies and pictures are staged to create a certain image and stir up jealousy. With photo shop and filters anyone can make their life appear like an enviable magazine and gain followers. People are too blind to see the smoke and mirrors.
There is a popular Christian woman blogger I used to follow. Once she posted pictures of a dinner party she had with some friends and family. The many blurry-background shots were gorgeous and looked like a Pottery Barn fantasy. Everyone looked beautiful and famous, the decorations were stunning. Only thing was her mother also had an unknown blog that I had stumbled upon and she happened to post her own (basic camera) pictures of the same event. I was shocked to see how cheap and ordinary the same table and decor appeared in regular, unedited photos. The gorgeous friends and family looked like regular people, no different than any of my friends and family. While those pictures were nice they were more of a record and less of a magazine show. It made me realize how manipulative camera editing is with presenting reality. It also made me realize how many people post things not to "show their life" but more to "show off".
So your problem isn't with the device, its with the way people use them and where they use them. Most people use them like house phones, just that they use them away from the house.
I haven't used Facebook in a long time, and never had the other things like Snapchat or Twitter. I didn't like seeing how people did easily abuse it, or just be straight-up annoying with sharing their weird thoughts openly. I also don't like random people looking you up and adding you to see your life that you've posted. It made me not even use my last name on my Facebook to avoid weird people I met in real life from finding me on it.
But, I don't think it really means social media is bad, just the people who abuse it. It's like when people say guns don't kill people, people kill people.
As for texting... I do hate being at dinner in the rare times I do eat with people and they have their heads shoved in their phones, but I think texting is fine when it comes to people you can't physically be face to face with, like people out of state.
Social media has made affirmation an addiction. It has made people create their own "reality shows" where selfies and pictures are staged to create a certain image and stir up jealousy. With photo shop and filters anyone can make their life appear like an enviable magazine and gain followers. People are too blind to see the smoke and mirrors.
There is a popular Christian woman blogger I used to follow. Once she posted pictures of a dinner party she had with some friends and family. The many blurry-background shots were gorgeous and looked like a Pottery Barn fantasy. Everyone looked beautiful and famous, the decorations were stunning. Only thing was her mother also had an unknown blog that I had stumbled upon and she happened to post her own (basic camera) pictures of the same event. I was shocked to see how cheap and ordinary the same table and decor appeared in regular, unedited photos. The gorgeous friends and family looked like regular people, no different than any of my friends and family. While those pictures were nice they were more of a record and less of a magazine show. It made me realize how manipulative camera editing is with presenting reality. It also made me realize how many people post things not to "show their life" but more to "show off".
lol. I have to laugh thinking of one of my nephews whose facebook header photo (whatever it's called) shows his family, including a couple of little tykes, after having had dinner at a restaurant. The table is full of crumpled napkins and dirty plates. Who the hell takes those kinds of photos and thinks people want to see them? It makes me want to puke every time I see it. Clean the damned table before you show the world pictures of your family, for Pete's sake!
Lets face it, people are obsessed with social media nowadays. While it can be entertaining and useful at times, I believe that in general, social media is creating an increasingly narcissistic society. More specifically, I believe that social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, etc. is helping to create a generation of self-centered people due to the ego-centric nature of these platforms.
Again, social media can be entertaining and useful at times. I just believe it may be doing more harm than good on the current generation. And I'm not some old man whos bitter against the younger generation, or some angry social outcast, I'm just an average 22 year old.
While I agree with your post and the point your are making complete, it is not that "people" are obsessed with social media. It is SOME people that are obsessed with social media. There are many of us that are living just fine without all that in our lives, and having great social, face to face interactions with others, you know, real, living, breathing "friends" and family. I have seen people get into the stupidest situations due to their FACEBOOK lives. For me, my privacy, and my families privacy, is absolutely precious. "Friending" or "Unfriending", any assumption of privacy on those mediums is absolute ignorance.
I look around, I do catch the daily news headlines sometimes, and frankly I see that people feel lonelier than ever. So, I don't think it fills the emptiness the way people think it will. It can't. It isn't real.
However, I feel about Facebook, etc., the same way I feel about tabloid magazines and reality shows, all very successful, no doubt.
None of these things would exist without a lot of people out there who have a desire to see them.
Assuming you mean land lines. it's not the same at all.
I grew up at a time when we didn't even have answering machines. Everything was fine. Sure, if you weren't home when the phone rang you missed a call or at least got delayed in getting the message. I can't remember a time that it really mattered.
Lets face it, people are obsessed with social media nowadays. While it can be entertaining and useful at times, I believe that in general, social media is creating an increasingly narcissistic society. More specifically, I believe that social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, etc. is helping to create a generation of self-centered people due to the ego-centric nature of these platforms.
Again, social media can be entertaining and useful at times. I just believe it may be doing more harm than good on the current generation. And I'm not some old man whos bitter against the younger generation, or some angry social outcast, I'm just an average 22 year old.
I'm not sure that there's anything "new under the sun," so I don't think that social media has created anything. I'd say it has just added to our human condition - which isn't a good thing.
Social media - like pretty much everything else - contains both good and bad. The only social media I'm on is Facebook, and I use it to connect and communicate with old high school & college classmates, and with friends & family. But I did unfollow, block, and/or unfriend quite a few people during the last year, because they were so aggressively and hatefully political - and that's just not something I'm willing to be involved in.
Lets face it, people are obsessed with social media nowadays. While it can be entertaining and useful at times, I believe that in general, social media is creating an increasingly narcissistic society. More specifically, I believe that social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, etc. is helping to create a generation of self-centered people due to the ego-centric nature of these platforms.
Again, social media can be entertaining and useful at times. I just believe it may be doing more harm than good on the current generation. And I'm not some old man whos bitter against the younger generation, or some angry social outcast, I'm just an average 22 year old.
Personally, I find the "aggressively and hatefully political" facebook posts absolutely hilarious!
As for the rest of the "social media scene", I check this City Data forum more often than I probably should, I look at facebook daily, and an RV forum.
My cell phone is a telephone; it makes and receives telephone calls. I occasionally receive a text on it, but I never send text messages. I do not use the camera function.
I have 2 email accounts. One of them is seldom used, the other gets all the trash. That one I clean out a couple of times a day,deleting all the junk mail and most of the inbox items.
I am registered with a few other internet forums, but rarely visit them.
I stay away from eBay, craigslist, and amazon, due in part to lack of funds, and in part having little desire to buy a bunch of stuff to clutter up the house and shop.
Those who spend half or more of their waking hours with their total attention aimed at a smart phone, it is your life, do as you will with it. Good luck.
Oh, and keep in mind the woman who walked into a fountain while concentrating on her phone, and those who fell off a cliff on the West Coast, trying to get just the right "selfie shot", and those who walked out into traffic while concentrating on their phone, and didn't somebody fall into the Grand Canyon under similar circumstances?
Situational awareness is a wonderful thing...
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