Sometimes I Hate My Generation

Hi, my name is Daisy Phillips and I joined facebook in November 2004.  Facebook had only been around for nine months when I joined, and the draw was you had to have an @something.edu address to sign up.  I was already a former Friendster subscriber and current MySpace junkie, so joining facbeook seemed overkill, but after receiving more than ten invitations from college friends, I gave in and signed up.  I now have almost 1,000 friends from high school, college, work, church, and people I've met while out, even after being unfriended by some and unfriending others.  I have many fake friends.  Too many fake friends.  Everyone tells me to just unfriend or create groups.  But with 900 something friends, it takes more time to sort through and organize them, than to avoid facebook all together.  I've picked the latter and selectively post status updates and photos.  While I see the value in facebook for sharing photos with family and updates that matter, the reality is I wish I could start over on facebook.  I am a facebook junkie.  I have a facebook problem.  I love, hate, and am constantly obsessed with facebook.

Sometimes I hate my generation.  Though I say "we" here, you can easily substitute "I" for "we."

We've turned into social media junkies who don't know how to have a relationship in real life.  We walk by facebook friends but pretend we don't see each other to avoid actual real life conversation.  We get all our updates through photo stalking, and for some of us, even wall stalking.  We laugh at the youth who sit at dinner tables in restaurants with their headphones on instead of talking to their parents, say we won't let our own kids do that, and then we turn around and play on our iPhones while our kid plays nearby.  We play online phone games in the same room with each other, have extensive text conversations instead of talk on the phone, post photos and updates of our happenings instead of enjoying our happenings, and take photos of everything we do to share it/show off to everyone else.  We are cowards, intimidated by real life interactions, infatuated with online relationships, and overloaded with too much of everyone else's business.

So when do you think the social media bubble will burst?

While some people are predicting the education bubble to burst next, I am hoping for the social media.

Real life wasn't mean to be shared like this.  Overshare.  Too much information.

The end.