Has ruined our lives, or the lives of those who are so dependent on this crap that they would die without them. I have to carry a mobile phone because i am forced to, everything runs by mobile and texting these days, but i refuse to text unless it is an emergency, and i only make a call to someone while i am away from home if i absolutely have to, otherwise it wait until i get home, and i never answer my phone in my car (its illegal here in Australia) but even if it wasn't i will never do so, and i never answer it if it is not a caller that is listed in my contact list. I hate social media, facebook in particular, and i am now seeing more and more evidence of it now becoming addictive to many people, gone are the days of people going to a party or meeting in groups for a chat and a good time, yest they still do that, but everyone sits there gawking at their phones at the same time. Sad pathetic lives i call it.
I shut my FB down months ago. Don't miss it even a little bit. There's no cell phone service where I live so I don't have one of those invasive awful devices. I suppose this Forum counts as social media but the difference is that I never find ads in my email based on some word that I used in a post here. It feels more private... whether it really is private or not. The last time I was in a big city, I noticed the phenomena you are talking about, though. People staring at their phones... everywhere. It's like some odd pod people movie.
It doesn't really bother me. If someone uses a phone, doesn't effect me. If someone uses Facebook, it doesn't effect me either.
What affects me is that people are walking around texting and reading their phones with it in front of their faces, and bumping into things and not being aware of their surroundings, like women pushing a pram while reading the phone or texting, and the pram wheels roll off the footpath into the gutter, one pram goes straight into a traffic light pole, a womans left foot slipped into the gutter and fractured it, and those who walk right into you on the footpath or in a shopping mall. Having a conversation to people and they are flickering thru their phone, it is so dam annoying. We don't get cell phone coverage in our house because we are behind a big hill and the tower is o the other side.
I think the problem exists, even if it doesn't affect ourselves in first person. I'm very annoyed when I go out with a friend and she pass lots of our time cheking her social network or whatsapp or simply has her phone constanltly in her hands. And this happen not only in the cases in which the conversation between us is annoying but even if she is very interested...it is so boring.. The problem is that we live in a society where there are two main problems: 1) people has a terrible fear of other judgment: we are obsessed by impression that we gave and so we use social to give others the best images of ourself, becouse doing it behind a screen is simpler than doing it in real life 2) we aren't able of relax ourself: we wanna constantly knows everything everywhere of everyone, we have this tragic need of always being aware, and are not capable of simply appreciate the moment in which we are, the "now", the beauty that is hidden behind a twilight or a face of a kid passing near us eating his icecream with joy... I think that now it is impossible to imagine a life without social becouse they are penetrated in our reality and affect all the aspects of today life, but I thinks that it is possible to discover again what we are loosing. it is difficoult, but maybe we can try..
extremes are generally bad. people that can't get their face away from their phone have a problem, but no worse than people that have a convenient communication tool in their pocket but absolutely refuse to use it for no good reason.
As for as Mobile phone is concern, I think its a great invention specially now a days when world looked as a Global village. You always in touch of your love ones. But yes, you are right the social media is not necessary as much as people though about that. Its revealed the personal life of everone. But i don't know why social media like facebook and Twitter played vital role in our lifes. Wasted of time.
Because back in the oldern days you'd need to pick up a newspaper and then watch the news and blah blah to find out news and sports and when bands are coming and with Facebook you can see all that in 10 seconds, that's why.
when i was born, pong hadn't even been invented. the news was never a chemisty text book and no one was dumb enough to think it was. now i wonder if anyone is smart enough to know what i mean by that. but then i never gave a rat about sports or what band was coming to town anyway. what was playing at the local movie house i could see from the posters in the glass cases on the outside. (and anyone who had a job could afford to go see one if they felt like it, and everyone knew how to read. books and most other things were cheaper, not just by the amount of inflation, but in relation to how much the average person made. technologies were more expensive when they were new, but everything else was less) i think its self serving to bitch about the technologies though, when its still up to us whether to build an house or beat each other over the head. culture is the real culprit there. when it makes it easier and more popular to beat each other then build houses. people like to blame technology for culture, but really, its culture that inspires and motivates technology. and what motivates culture are factors like ego and politics. before the bullshit of bussiness discovered the internet, it was all forums about technology, it was an enclave for people who were interested in interesting things, not social bullshit like farcebook. and before that of course, there were just hobbyists, who learned how to use a soldering iron and solve for ohm's law. the great gift of the internet is that it made media accessable and paricipatory, instead of being only a propiganda organ of whoever could afford to control it. but in trying to make that easy for people who aren't too smart, well that has become a stratigy in trying to take back that paticiapatory voice it had given.
