Someone sent me this list today. I removed all of the dull points to include only the ones that made me giggle:
YOU KNOW YOU ARE LIVING IN 2012 WHEN…
1. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of three.
2. You e-mail the person who works at the desk next to you.
3. You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home to help you carry in the groceries…
4. Leaving the house without your cell phone, which you didn’t even have the first 20 or 30 (or 60) years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you turn around to go and get it
5. You get up in the morning and go online before getting your coffee
6. You start tilting your head sideways to smile. : )
7. You’re reading this and nodding and laughing.
8. Even worse, you know exactly to whom you are going to forward this message.
I enjoyed each of these points and I am sure the list can go on, but there is one bullet I’d like to add:
9. Your relationship status becomes blasted within seconds to all friends and family in one News Feed story on Facebook.
Nowadays, an evolving trend is to post our entire lives on Facebook. If someone just got into Yale – you already know. If someone is enjoying the beautiful weather – you already know. If someone wants to make you jealous through pictures of his or her Miami vacation – you are already jealous. If someone has burped – you… get my drift.
The one crazy thing about social media, particularly Facebook, is that we make our relationship status so visible. The “status” becomes a part of our pages, physically, and a part of ourselves, emotionally.
What I mean by this is that we become emotionally attached to our relationship status on Facebook. Now that the iPhones, iPads and i(insert the next great Apple invention here) are out, being on this system takes up about one third of our day. That might even be me being kind.
With all of this time spent stalking people’s pictures and hating on the new Timeline appearance, it becomes such an integral part of our lives. It is also a tool which we use to communicate to everyone (we know, love, and pretend to like) what we are doing.
Gone are the days where you stand in the middle of the square reading off of a scroll to the townspeople. Now, within 10 seconds I can instantly have “1,000” pairs of eyes on anything I am doing. No wonder we are so attached to our statuses – it is a declaration to everyone we know and have sat next to in class that we are in love.
I heard my girlfriend the other night talk about how her boyfriend of many years has just broken up with her. He told her he was no longer in love with her, and she is absolutely devastated. The first thing she said to him was “Just give me a couple of days to take it off of Facebook.”
When I heard this, I knew I had my next 25 For Life piece. I wasn’t even surprised that this was her first thought during their conversation. A lot of people harbor so many emotions when it comes to “the status.”
For her, that was a part of her identity that she has to remove. Once she does, the relationship is officially over. Yes, I use the word “officially,” because we all know that we have said, “Is it Facebook official?” at least once in our adolescent lives.
Although it is fascinating how technology evolves every day; it is also alarming. If we are becoming so emotionally attached to our Facebooks, and we have iPhones that we can bark messages at within seconds, what’s next? Soon the world will look like a scene from I, Robot? Will Smith will have to take down robots that have feelings and practice martial arts? I might be jumping a few generations on that one, but keep a close eye on today’s technology and how it affects us. It might get “officially” scary!
