Some people rant about the ugly truth about the society of social networking service. "There are too much lies. I can't stand it." "Why posted about what you do yesterday? Why should I care?" and etc.
For one, I think we should understand and accept the reality that the world had long changed they way we connect and obtain information in daily basis. Baby Boomers and Generation X faced difficulties to get better education as they had to struggle in pursuit of independence and towards rebuilding a better nation while Generation Y had better luck with more things to learn, in fact there is an abundance of information that the challenge nowadays is not how to obtain knowledge, but to compare between them and determine which one is the truth and false. So, it's something that we should face and find a solution, not to run away from it. If not, then, how Generation Y differs from the former?
As society gets more complicated, so does our problem. And in the world of Web 2.0 (google the term), networking is crucial than ever. An argument came to say that posting meaningless status updates over time become an "awareness". These statuses will be like dots connecting each other to form a portrait, by looking through a person timeline and see what the person shared, we somehow can pick his/her personality, mood/thought, preferences etc. No longer do we need to call each person to know about what they are up to so the next time we met them even though rarely get together, it shouldn't be hard to strike a conversation. Who knows, having a preserved old friendship might come in handy later.
Furthermore, we are now embracing "public thinking", the ability to broadcast our ideas and thoughts. When we see issues on a news site, there are people giving brilliant and thought-provoking comments for us to ponder upon and question-answering sites like quora.com had people discusses about particular questions in multiple perspectives. In fact, some companies went to harness this opportunity to ask people about their products to deliver more satisfying benefits to consumers.
All in all, I'm still acknowledging the downside of social media, but as a rule of thumb, we should always be mindful and keep aware when our dallying in digital environment is taking us away from doing things we should do. It is a tool, and like when you go to a stream of river, you don't inhale the entire river but take a few sips and walk away some time until you're thirsty again.
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