I have a question for you, although this is really aimed at a certain group of people. The question is this: if something happened to me, how would you like to find out about it?
The reason I’m asking this particular question is quite simple. We live in a day and age where social media is king, it’s the premier way of finding out how a person is doing and what’s been happening to them, be it good, bad, or otherwise.
But that’s the thing that really annoys me about social media. It can be so impersonal at times. Over the past few years I’ve seen news about members of my immediate family on social media, the sort of news that, up until a few years ago, would have been conveyed via a telephone call.
I’ve seen news about deaths, births, marriages, hospitalisations and more posted on social media, news that millions of people probably had access to before I saw it. What hurts even more is that some of the news I saw by accident, posted in a way that was more than obvious that I wasn’t the intended recipient.
It hurts like hell that people can’t pick up the telephone and tell you their news, that they have to share it with the wider world, even though that news could be of a highly personal nature and leave you absolutely devastated when you read it.
I love the internet. It’s opened up lines of communication that I wouldn’t have had access to twenty-odd years ago, and I love social media and the way it enables me to keep in touch with family and friends hundreds and thousands of miles away. But at the same time I hate it because it’s taken away that personal touch.
So I’ll this question of you again: if something happened to me, how would you like to find out? Would you prefer a personal telephone call, or are you willing to take the chance that you may see a post on your news feed that will contain vague information about what’s happened to me?
Send the answer on a postcard to the usual address.
The reason I’m asking this particular question is quite simple. We live in a day and age where social media is king, it’s the premier way of finding out how a person is doing and what’s been happening to them, be it good, bad, or otherwise.
But that’s the thing that really annoys me about social media. It can be so impersonal at times. Over the past few years I’ve seen news about members of my immediate family on social media, the sort of news that, up until a few years ago, would have been conveyed via a telephone call.
I’ve seen news about deaths, births, marriages, hospitalisations and more posted on social media, news that millions of people probably had access to before I saw it. What hurts even more is that some of the news I saw by accident, posted in a way that was more than obvious that I wasn’t the intended recipient.
It hurts like hell that people can’t pick up the telephone and tell you their news, that they have to share it with the wider world, even though that news could be of a highly personal nature and leave you absolutely devastated when you read it.
I love the internet. It’s opened up lines of communication that I wouldn’t have had access to twenty-odd years ago, and I love social media and the way it enables me to keep in touch with family and friends hundreds and thousands of miles away. But at the same time I hate it because it’s taken away that personal touch.
So I’ll this question of you again: if something happened to me, how would you like to find out? Would you prefer a personal telephone call, or are you willing to take the chance that you may see a post on your news feed that will contain vague information about what’s happened to me?
Send the answer on a postcard to the usual address.
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