Social Media: It’s Sucking Your Soul

I recently went to a wedding and I was appalled to find that the younger generation choose to socialize at the event through social media! As I was looking around the venue, the older generation was walking around and having drinks with one another while engaging in friendly conversation. However, the younger generation was sitting at their table and taking photos for their SnapChats, Instagrams, posting status updates to Facebooks and Twittering them tweets and whatever else is cool these days. Once I arrived home I decided to check my social media, and I was able to see EVERYTHING that was being posted during the event. I do not think that there is anything wrong with this type of expression, but I began to question why people WANT to post stuff in the first place. Is it to show off? Is it to seek attention? Is it about how many “likes” you can get? Or is it the simple fact that people CAN? Whatever the case may be, I think that it is important that we limit our social media interactions. It is consuming us and is putting a stop to the amount of face-to-face interactions we are having.

When you are plugged into social media and you are cyber stalking someone (don’t even try to lie, we ALL have done it) they seem to have their lives together. The key word there is: SEEM! When people post things to social media, they are posting the “cream of the crop” so to say. Meaning they are shedding light on all of the fun things and great times that are happening in their lives. So to be a third person looking in, and to think that they have their live together is completely wrong. We are only getting one side of the story, we are getting what people choose to post, what they CHOOSE to make public. I am sure that others feel the same way when they Facebook stalk you. When people do post something negative or something bad that is happening in their life, we tend to think that they are only seeking attention. Why is it ok to show off that you went on an awesome vacation, but when you are having a rough time, people think you are seeking attention? When people post things that could be viewed as “attention seeking,” it could just be a coping mechanism for something the poster is going through, and could simply be reaching out for some support. Everyone has the right to post whatever they want to THEIR social media, and if you do not like what you are seeing you have the right to ignore, block, unfriend or whatever you see fit.

There are also those circumstances where things get posted to social media to show others up, air out the dirty laundry, or to poke at someone else without actually saying who or what they are talking about. I get that this is one way people deal with issues in their life but it is petty and immature. If you cannot say something to someone’s face or if you are trying to send a message to someone indirectly, there is a deeper issue and you need to figure out why you have trouble talking face-to-face. If you find yourself on the other end of things and think that everyone is out to get YOU and is attacking YOU …. First off get a life, the Earth, Sun, Moon and whatever else is floating out there is not spinning around YOU. Secondly, if the other person cannot say something to your face, then it is simply not important enough for you to worry your little head about it.

Focus on what is important in your life. If you are spending long hours on something that is not enriching your life, then essentially you are wasting away. What you see on your facebook news feed is not reality, we choose to believe that all of those people on there are our “friends,” but our friends are the people that are there for us when we need them. Those friends that are there for us before the Sh*t hits the fan and are there after to clean it up and deodorize, those are the people that ARE important, THEY get dirty fo’ you! The more time you spend fussing with social media you are missing out on the reality around you. Reminder: Your time is precious! You will not be getting a refund for time spent unwisely. Don’t indulge in social media to the point where you aren’t even enjoying the experience in the flesh. Ask yourself this, “Is all the time I’m spending letting the world know what I’m doing actually taking away from the actual thing they see me doing?” If the answer is yes then stop and LIVE for LIFE’S SAKE! Life is only temporary.

Many people use social media like Facebook to keep in touch with their friends and family members. My friend (actual friend in the flesh) was telling me that they were being tagged in pictures of a newborn and said to me “As time goes by I’m probably going to watch this baby grow up through a screen.” It’s not bad that we look to these means of communication as a way to stay “connected,” we must be careful and think about how we are beginning to drift from a face-to-face society to a face-to-FACELESS society. The lack of physical contact can be desensitizing, it allows us to stretch out our feelings over time therefore losing our initial reaction. We are no longer genuine in our sentiment about our initial reactions when we are sitting behind a screen, we have the choice to respond to others when we feel the time is right, even if that is 2 years later.

What about 10 years later? As we get invitations for our high school reunions, I begin to wonder what is the point. Through social media, I know who is having kids and when they are having them (literally), who got married, who got divorced, who is doing what job, who came out of what the closet, when and where people have traveled. If I can see all of that through a screen on my phone why do I need to physically go to a reunion? If I REALLY wanted to catch up with someone I can simply send them a message or write on their wall. Social media has taken the excitement out of attending a reunion. It has given us the privilege to keep in touch with one another long after we have moved on with our lives, but it stops us from enjoying these types of social events.

Everyday we are presented with the opportunities to speak to the people around us, or we can CHOOSE to look at our phone. If we put our phones down for a minute who knows who we will meet, but we will NEVER meet that person if we are busy looking at who is having what baby on Facebook.UNPLUG! Turn that Facebook-thang off, and turn yo face on! Your lips are there to talk to people and your brain is there to think and engage with others in CONVERSATION! … ACTUAL CONVERSATION WITH YO’ FACE TO ANOTHER FACE.

Question Everything

Don’t let others have power over you, be informed! Don’t become susceptible to believing what others tell you because YOU are too lazy to go find the information for yourself. There is an infinite amount of information out there, some of it is bullshit and some of it is useful. It can be used to sway people to make important decisions in life such as electing the right officials to office and deciding what life goals to pursue, and the list does not end here. You need to be informed to help make good decisions in life. So don’t take everything you hear at face value, do some research for yourself and be informed as much as possible. In the end there is more good that this will do for you, benefit from your OWN findings. You can be sure that you got the information right at the source instead of trusting that someone else has your interest in mind. When you do the work yourself, you have the power to decide what information is useful to you and the satisfaction of knowing that you went out and got it for yourself.

Voting is one example. Currently there is an extremely important election coming up in my town. Most people I have talked to are questioning the mailers and huge campaign ads that are plastered around town. It’s good to question and doubt what the media is feeding your brain, it’s HIGHLY encouraged. People who are not up to speed with what’s going on in the election have confessed to me that they frankly don’t care one way or the other how the election turns out. This is upsetting to me because, these are the people that complain and nag about how things in our community are nowhere near perfect, and yet they don’t care enough to voice their opinion. They CHOOSE not to vote and they CHOOSE not to care. The reality is that if more people were aware about what is going on in their own communities, they would take it upon themselves to encourage their fellow neighbors to get involved. When the elections are over, people think that they don’t have to do anything until the next election, NO! People need to continue to stay informed so that they know exactly what is going on and see how they can organize to come together and make a difference in the community. This would set the example for future generations. We have to be the change we wish to see so that our descendants know what it takes to change the world around them.

Likewise, people should take it upon themselves to continue to pursue their life goals. It’s not enough to want to be what you wish in terms of your dream career. You need to push through barriers and latch on to what you want for yourself. Don’t let others convince you that it won’t payoff. Prove them wrong, make it work for YOU! Hard work always pays off no matter how long it takes. QUESTION EVERYTHING, Do not leave any stone unturned. This is YOUR life, start living it … take control, because what you decide today will affect you tomorrow. The information is out there, you just need to get up and go find it! :D

In this day and age, we have an abundance of technology at our disposal. People CHOOSE to be ignorant or they CHOOSE to be aware. Dont keep a closed mind. If you want to learn something the best way to find answers is to seek them, and it goes without saying that this won’t happen without a little effort on your part. If someone is telling you one thing and someone else is saying another, who are you going to believe? Question everything; why is this person talking to me now? How do I benefit? How will they benefit? Why are they putting so much emphasis on this? etc. Ask as many questions as you see fit, ask the right questions that will get you to the answers YOU need. Like the post Hareena wrote on Best Interests, everyone is for themselves, we all want what is beneficial for us, even if we don’t realize it.

When you receive information through another person, you’re only getting what THEY want to tell you. However, if you go out and find the information at the source for yourself, you will have the whole picture, which will determine what you find most interesting. My fellow humans, we need to be more aware of our surroundings. Stop for one moment, stop texting, stop doing what you’re doing and open your eyes and ears so that when the time comes, you can open your mouth and voice with what YOU know.  

Technology Made Us Dumb-Dumb!

Has our our idea of what common knowledge is, changed due to technology? I have written about technology before in a different manner check it out HERE. I have been a math tutor for years, and one common thing I see is that students do not know their basic multiplication, and the argument for not needing to know them is that they have calculators in their phones. Now back in my day our teachers use to argue that we needed to know how to do math without calculators because we would not be carrying them around with us in our pockets all the time. Has technology enabled us to become dumb?

I think it is extremely sad that a student cannot tell me something a basic as 3 times 3 without a calculator. Then when I take away the calculator the student can't even begin to tell me how they would go about figuring it out without punching numbers in a machine. It does not take much skill to put numbers into a calculator, but you do need brain power to arrive at the right answer without using a calculator. Now I am not saying that calculators are all bad, there is much good that comes from technology as a whole, but why are the basics being forgotten? Math students have become so dependent on their calculators they simply cannot function without them. Understanding how multiplication works is vital to understanding math.

Backpacking off of the Calculator idea, let’s take a look at auto-correct! We don’t need to know how to spell! Right now as I am typing this I don’t have to worry about having misspellings. The computer will tell me by underlining the word in red, and even then I don’t have to look up the word, I can just right-click and the correct word pops up, like magic. Because of auto-correct, I never learn from my mistakes, I do not have to do the extra work of opening up a dictionary (yes kids, the Dictionary is a tangible book!) to look up the correct spelling, and as for the definition? Well, I have Google for that. By looking up the correct word in the dictionary, our mind can better retain the information allowing us not to forget how to spell it correctly.  

GPS. I think the GPS is great, I will never get lost, but who knows how to look at a map now a days? Just punch where you want to go into this device and it will tell you word for word where to go, it will even tell you when you have made a mistake. There is a study that was done at McGill University about how the GPS effects the human brain. Using GPS will affect people’s memory, and spatial orientation. Don’t just take my word for it here is an article about it, that I found on Google (see what I did there? ; )). This study just proves the popular saying, “if you don’t use it, you lose it.”

Pablo Picasso once said “Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.” Picasso was right, the answer is unimportant if you do not understand how your arrived there. Whether it be math, or an actual location it's all about the journey, not the destination. We need to step back and realize when we rely on technology too much, and try to make a change so that we do not become too dependent.

~Save your MINDS! A terrible thing to waste… or mess up.

One Man's Trash is Another Man's Treasure

When I was moving out of my dorm after freshmen year in college I remember there were bins and areas to leave all the things you didn't want to take back home. Out of curiosity I took a gander to see if there was anything I might want to bring home with me. There were Microwaves, shoes, clothing, drawers, TVs and miscellaneous objects. Some students even asked passerbys if they could take X item with them only because it had sentimental value and it didn't fit in their car. They didn't want to just leave it sitting there with a pile of trash, because this person was so attached to the item. This just goes to show that we tend to own more than we can even carry because we believe we NEED these things, leading to the increase of trash when we don't really NEED it. I believe in the idea that one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. Since there is so much stuff around, eventually something is bound to be of use to another person.

The pattern I see very often is that most people end up replacing things they toss out with new stuff that will eventually get tossed out as well. When you throw shit away you don’t realize where it ends up, if it’s out of sight it’s out of mind but ultimately it ends up taking space and pollutes our earth. It takes a really long time for garbage to decompose and that all depends on what exactly is in the landfill. Here is a link that shows the time it takes for decomposition of different materials. These materials inevitably end up in our soil where we grow the food we eat.

I have received a total of 5 iPod in the past 4 years and each one was newer than the last. I didn't even have to purchase an iPod and I already have more than I need. The amazing part is that people actually buy them either because they simply need to have the latest version or because they don’t value what they already have. Our society today are consumerists, obsessed with having the newest smartphone, mp3 player, Jordan pumps etc. they want to be current. The media is responsible for making consumers believe they NEED  whatever it is that they’re advertising to survive. Many people say “I can’t live without my phone,” (see Hareena’s post on technology) and this ideology paves the way for over consumption when media is looking after their own profits, creating more stuff than we need.

The best way to make sure that something has been used to the fullest extent is to donate it. Donating items allows that it will get more use. Considering the amount of waste we already have, the ideal thing to do is reduce, reuse, and re-purpose. By doing this we are reducing the creation of more trash for mother earth to be burdened with and further ensuring that stuff gets used. Before we decide we want a new phone we should look at the need, can our current phone do the trick for a little while more? We as a society need to begin to realize that this is our earth, we only get one and we need to take care of it. We may have our differences in trash vs. treasure but we can all agree the important treasure is the one keeping us alive, the planet EARTH, FOO!

peace to the trees.

Check Into Reality

I have heard people say over and over that they do not know what they would do without technology, but hey, guess what? There was a time when such luxuries did not exist, there is more to life than having the newest smartphone, or knowing who posted what on Facebook. Go outside, go for a walk, read a book, jog, write, breathe.

I, myself, am guilty of this. Every morning the first thing I reach for is my phone (partly because that is my alarm clock). This then leads me to check my email, and other social media, my day starts out with a BIG dose of technology when I have not even washed the crusties out of my eyes. This sets the tone for the rest of my day.

We need cut back on the amount we are checking out of reality and checking in to technology. I am not saying that technology is a bad thing. There are many benefits that we have gained from technology, but we need to check into reality more often.

We are social creatures, we need human interaction, and having a conversation with another being is the best way to get it. I have come to a realization that I need to make a change in my life, and I know I am not alone.I feel like I can only have a conversation with someone through text message, or social media. Having a face to face conversation is hard to come by these days.

I have made a change in my life to check into reality more. On the days I do not go to work I take my dog out for a walk, and the only thing I take with me is my phone (in case of an emergency). This is an hour of my day for me to take in the fresh air and unwind.There is a pond where I take my dog, and sometimes I like to sit and listen. Hearing the running water, the ducks and people walking by makes me realize how much life there is.

The other day on my walk I witnessed the moment when a father successfully taught his little girl how to ride her bike. I saw as he gave her her final push, and he just watched her ride down the sidewalk with a big grin on his face, the grin of accomplishment. He turned around and began to walk the other direction, but he was still looking back to make sure she was ok when she realized that he was not holding her bike any more.

I also got to witness a man walking with a blind woman, he was telling her about their surroundings, describing the colors in the sunset, giving imagery to the two little ducks that crossed their path. The best part was the huge smile on the woman’s face. The man was putting so much thought into what he was saying to her that she knew that the warmth that she was feeling was from the setting sun, and that the woman who just passed them was walking a small white dog.

It was truly amazing that I had the opportunity to witness these events just outside my front door. I would not have been able to be apart of those events if I was looking at my phone.

We are already so busy in our lives that we do not take time to appreciate the small things, and if we are looking at our smartphones, those small things just pass us by.

Everyone has their own way of expressing themselves. I enjoy going on walks but you could also read a good book, or go for a jog, write or talk to someone new. The point is to step out of our smartphones and into our lives.

~Check out of technology, and check into your reality.