Technology has advanced our society in so many ways, but in others it has set us back.
Before I get into why I think this is, please understand that I enjoy the ability to use social media and the Internet; it’s a great resource.
However, I also think that almost everything has its pros and cons and in some cases, technology is one of those things.
In terms of social media, I probably have way more people on my Facebook friends list than I’m actually friends with.
In fact, I can’t remember the last time that I’ve talked to most of those people.
The problem I generally run into is that I log onto Facebook, scroll through my newsfeed, see all of the different posts and then like a few of them.
It makes me think about some of the people whom I saw pictures of for about two seconds, but I don’t actually take the time to send them a message and say, “Hi, how are you?” when it would be so easy to do that.
I think it’s safe to say that anyone who has more than 100 people on their friends list doesn’t talk to every single one of them every day, but there are some people who I haven’t talked to in years.
It may sound absolutely ridiculous, but when I haven’t talked to someone in a long time, I feel weird messaging them because it’s been that long.
So what happens is I don’t talk to them for a longer period of time and I never get comfortable enough to be the first person talk to them.
Often times, I feel OK not doing this because I like a picture or a status.
But in reality, it’s a very unhealthy habit to fall into.
To be fair, I know that it’s impossible to talk to everyone whom I consider a friend every day, but I think I should be able to talk to at least most of them about once a year if they have a social media account and I’m logged on almost every day.
It would seem as though at the point that I added a person on Facebook, I considered that person one of my friends, so why can’t I at least talk to him/her?
I know it would be ridiculously easy for me to talk someone because I have been the person to say hello to a person after not talking to them for a few years. Everything turned out all right.
I honestly don’t think that it’s because I’m too intimidated to talk to people I haven’t talked to in a while. I think I would just feel obligated to talk to everyone that I haven’t spoken with in years and I don’t have time for that.
You might think that this is more of a way to apologize to all of my friends whom I haven’t talked to in years, and you’re not completely wrong.
But this is also a way for me to analyze how the effects of technology have negatively impacted our society.
Sure I have the ability to talk to friends I have that are hundreds, or thousands, of miles away, but I’m also not using it to its full potential because of some of the advancements.
KHADIJA DJELLOULI
