It has become normality to transfer everything from our actual lives to our 'online lives'.
As soon as there’s a party; it's a 'facebook event', a relationship is started; it's made 'facebook official', you're at the beach ; you update your 'facebook location', you go and visit a friend so naturally tag them in your status, something funny happens; a picture is taken and ‘instantly uploaded’.
Sometimes, I have to step back from everything and consider how crazy it is that I know what someone I met travelling years ago is doing today. Not just what they're up to, but their relationship, job and holidays and plans.
I've forgotten what it feels like for someone to ask me how an old school friend is and not know the answer. As inevitably at some point I will have seen a status or wall post somewhere enabling me to subconsciously gather what’s going on in their lives.
But it’s not the technology that I struggle to get to grips with; the internet has been around for 20 years now so this is all fairly inevitable. It’s the normality of constantly being ‘in the know’ regarding other peoples’ lives that baffles me.
“People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook” (Facebook, 2011) This statistic will inevitably spark the response ‘how wasteful’....but most of us are guilty of doing just this.
The spread of smart phones has had a huge impact on this lifestyle; enabling one to constantly connect, like, accept, confirm and request anytime, anywhere.
Of course this ‘connectedness’ is largely a positive aspect to our lives, making communication and socialisation much easier than in the past. However, I can’t help but think when will it stop!? How can our lives be any more on show and interactive than they are at the moment?
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