Sunday, March 30, 2014

What I've learned from taking a break from the book

Sitting in the back seat on Facebook these past few weeks, here are a few things I have learned:


1. People give themselves a lot more credit for what they post than they deserve.
I've been in multiple conversations lately where someone is describing a weekend outing or situation, and they have actually said, "You probably saw the picture on Facebook." With complete confidence. Maybe I am biased as I have a large Facebook community, but I would never assume that someone sees each of my posts on Facebook, especially with how targeted the news feed is these days. Staying off of it shows me how much people rely on posting as a means to share their whereabouts, rather than actually sharing news aloud. 

2. Facebook is integral for learning about others' relationship statuses.
While Facebook's status updates are a key way to hear relationship news, clearly it can't be that important to your day-to-day life because if you were really close with someone, you'd hear about their "official" boyfriend/girlfriend status or engagement from them. That being said, I've missed plenty of relationship news shying away from Facebook, and heard about engagements through friends telling me the news or through ring photos on social platforms with more intimate communities, like Instagram. Because this is a "status update" that isn't an option on other platforms, it's most prevalent and frequently updated on Facebook. 

3. We have plenty of other outlets to communicate.
Not logging onto Facebook every few hours has taught me how many other communication outlets are accessible to reach others. If I want to reach out to someone in the digital space or send them an article, I can text, email or tweet at them instantly. All of those options exist to share photos too. Facebook only dominates if you let it. 

No comments:

Post a Comment