Do you know how much time you spend for facebooking and tweeting? In May 2011, Nielsen reported that American spent 53.5 billion total minutes on Facebook-or roughly 101,720 years. Can you imagine that time we waste for facebooking in one month? I am not saying social network is lame. But it is indeed addictive. Let's go back to the past time, when facebook and twitter was not yet existed. What we were doing back then? I suppose some of you mention these activities: reading books, writing, doing physical activities, and so on. Anything not including checking out your phone every five minutes to see if someone has commented your status. Rushing yourself to reply the tweets from your friends. Getting upset and grouching once you find the internet connection is very slow. Getting sad when none comment on your status. Yes, you get addicted and stressful with this so called social network.
Why am I writing about this? Well, I am a facebook fans also, and recently twitter fans too. I update status much and tweet quite much too. I subscribe for monthly prepaid internet for my mobile. Last week, I don't know why, the subscription was failed, so ending up I could not access the internet for the whole week. I was upset at the beginning, but the second, and third day, I got used to it. Not that I stopped visiting the pages, but I did not update my status and tweet much the whole week. And I feel that life is much easier when we don't facebook and tweet much.
People have the needs of affection and attention. People need friends. Social networks provide them all. You share your feeling and what's happening so people can see. They will then comment or mention on yours. The question is, do they really care? Is it an affection or merely just interested? Those are two different things. When you mention that you're sad in facebook, the persons who really care will call you and give you a hand. Someone who is interested, may only say, "be tough, dear". That's it!. It does not change the situation. So, we cannot value the friendship based on how many friends we have in facebook or how many followers in twitter. Going out and hanging out with friends, that is called socializing. Spending more quality time with family is much better. Developing new hobbies that will occupy your times is great. Writing in your blog is much better. There are many successful writer comes from a blogger. Just like Raditya Dika, Trinity "The Naked Traveler", and so on. This writing is not to avoid you (or myself) from social network. But, it is merely for our own awareness. We might have wasted too much time and energy just to get people's attention. In fact, we can spend more times in other meaningful activities. That is the way to become a more enriched people.
“Social networks aren’t about Web sites. They’re about experiences.” – Mike DiLorenzo, NHL social media marketing director.
