I remember when my cousin introduced me to Myspace. I became obsessed with this website because it allowed me to find all of my friends from school. I could look at their pictures, their favorite song, which of their “top 10” friends were, and I could also message them. To me this was the most wonderful thing I had ever seen. I would pray I could get home sooner just to log on and see if I had missed any important post or if I had any new messages from friends.
It was until a friend introduced me to Facebook that I realized Myspace wasn’t as great as I thought it was. It became my new fascination because I was in love with the idea of looking at my friends various interests, like their favorite movies, books, colors, authors, etc. Facebook allowed your profile to be a lot more personal. I found out things about my best friends that I didn’t even know until I saw their profile on Facebook and at times I doubted if I really knew them. There were days that I would find myself on Facebook for hours, lurking from profile to profile and judging people from their status and wall posts. By the age of 19 I had about 1,000 “friends” on Facebook, but I only spoke to about 50 or so.
I knew a lot of those friends I had but I would never speak to them outside of the comfort of Facebook. At one point, I had strangers sending me messages and asking how I knew them and why I had added them. Most if the time I had no idea of how or why I had requested to be their friends, yet I still managed to have a conversation with them. I found myself talking to my friends more on Facebook than at school. Socializing was made easier through Facebook and we saw this as a good thing, but in reality it just made us more uncomfortable when it came to having a con. .
tion. We don’t have to post everything we do through out the day. We don’t have to share our feelings to the world only to get hurt by them. This way of life isn’t satisfying. We are not meant to communicate through any kinds of screens. We have a voice for a reason and lately we don’t use it.
We’re afraid of being judged for the sound that our mouth makes when we speak. We’re afraid of saying the wrong things, which is why we type and re-read what we typed at least 10 times before we hit send. We are becoming into “over thinkers”. But we forget the old saying, “Over thinkers get depressed.” I live this quote every day. I voice my opinion even if I get judged.
I also tweet and post my opinion, and I like to talk about my feelings on Twitter all the time. Nothing beats a face to face conversation with my best friend though. FaceTime will never be able to replace her.
