Our lives tend to revolve around social media and knowing what’s happening in everyone’s lives. How has this effected your life? In your experience, has social media made dating easier? Harder?
I am BACK!! I took a few weeks off NAS while I was traveling around Europe. It was an awesome trip but I’m glad to be home and to get back to blogging again and participating in NAS.
Oh Social Media. I have a love-hate relationship with you. I in all honestly LOVE it. I live far from family and friends and before social media I rarely ever talked or saw them and at least now with facebook, email, and other forms of internet communication I can at least catch up with them more often than every few years when we are able to get together.
But like the video that Jen and Morgan posted once I shut the computer off I’m alone. And on Friday and Saturday nights when I have nothing to do and I’m stuck at home the internet is dead and there’s no one for me to talk to…except the posts of people doing cool things that they just post and then put the phone away and don’t respond to comments.
I’ve been slowly trying to fix that but it’s hard. It’s hard to make real life connections. I feel a lot of people already have their group of “real life friends” and don’t really want it to grow. I miss having things to do all the time. Some people have told me to move but I’m not really convinced that is going to solve my problem as I have online friends all over the country that have the same problem I do (and that was my piece on community since I missed last weeks).
While I was in Europe I brought my phone with me but it was basically an iPod Touch. I kept it in airplane mode the whole time and was only able to use it to connect with people when I had wifi. So unlike when I’m at home and can check my email and facebook and instagram and twitter ALL the time I was only able to check those things about 2-3 times a day (if I was lucky). It was actually kind of weird and freeing at the same time. I wasn’t constantly connected and attached to my phone and to what other people were doing. And the times when I was online I wasn’t able to really connect as much because of the 5-7 hour time difference.
I remember when we were on the island of Santorini, Greece the hotel we were staying at the wifi wasn’t working. By the 2nd day we were a tad stir-crazy from not having wifi. We went out to eat at a restaurant for dinner that had wifi and were finally able to contact friends and family and check email. It was weird. It was this happy but sad thing. At one point this one guy in our group was all look at us…how annoying are we we’re all staring at our phones! I remember one girl telling him to be quiet since we hadn’t had wifi in 2 days. But I thought it was true. Oh well.
I think since my trip I’ve kind of thought about my social media usage. I actually enjoyed my time in Greece when I was with people all the time and I didn’t have to rely on a screen to give me interaction or entertainment. I wished life could be like that ALL THE TIME…but I don’t know how to make that happen.
Since coming home I have used social media but I’m not sure I have as much…okay I probably have. But I’ve been learning to try and not take every little thing I see on it PERSONALLY (something I constantly struggle with). In the end I really try to use social media to be a positive influence in others lives. I try to post the good and uplifting and positive things. Someone recently told me they love the pope tweets that I post on facebook. That made me happy because sometimes I’m not sure what people on facebook are seeing (thanks facebooks algorithm changes).
In the end I think it’s good for us to evaluate our social media usage every now and then to make sure we are using it for good and then evaluating it to see how we can make better use of our time on it.
I’m really looking forward to next weeks post of our 1 year anniversary of the link-up!
I so agree that social media must be kept in check! And, glad you enjoyed Greece. I went there years ago to see friends. So wonderful!
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Thank you! It was!!
I always joke I am trying to use the Social media ‘powers for good’ – specifically to share the Catholic faith and to be a beacon of positive, uplifting information in the midst of the cat videos and complaints. This was a Great blog – reminding us it is great to get a break however, I am glad you are back online because the more people using social media for ‘good’. As scripture says, the harvest is plenty but laborers few!!
Yeah I have the popes tweets automatically posted to facebook and it’s done at like 4am so I never really see them and a girl sent me a message a few weeks ago how she LOVED that I did that since she isn’t on twitter and always loves what they say. I feel like totally getting off social media isn’t going to help us spread the gospel so being on it is good as long as we aren’t getting sucked in to much (which I always have to watch).
Beth, I’m with you on the social media thing. And the real-life friends thing. I, for one, am living in a new town (just finishing up my second year) and I’m finding friendships here slow to come by, even though everyone is perfectly friendly—an Anne of Green Gables, looking for bosom friends, kind of problem. All that to say, I hear you! Hang in there.
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Yeah this is my 3rd year living here and it’s still slow. I’ll see people at church or events and they are nice but nothing ever goes past that. And my friends far away seem too busy to stop and talk to me. I tell my mom I just want someone I can talk to every.single.day. HA. I’ve thought about moving but I’m not sure that is the answer either…oh well…I’m working on it!
It is so crazy that going TWO WHOLE DAYS without wifi is a big deal. I hope you are able to make more real life friends wherever you are. If you are anywhere near me I would love to hang out.
Yeah well we were in a foreign country and a lot of the kids on the trip were 18-20 and live at home and it was their first time ever away from home or out of the country. So not being able to contact friends/family I think was getting to them. Oh well.