I found an article by Sharon Gaudin which asserts that we are so addicted to social networking that there will be hell and public outcry if we don't get it. After Twitter was knocked offline by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack in August 2009, the website went down and millions of people were unable to tweet for two hours. In response, social networkers fled to their Facebook pages to write strongly-worded statuses about their inability to use Twitter, but some Facebook pages were also slowed by the connection problems, leaving many social networkers simply more frustrated.
As Gaudin writes:
When Twitter went offline yesterday, 45 million users -- including a growing number of older users -- were affected. And they were vocal about their feelings about it. One Facebook user noted, "Suffering tweet withdrawal." Another posted, "Wanting Twitter - NOW."
I was about to say "this is surprising", but it's not really. I'm not into Twitter, but I'll confess to having had times where I've been annoyed at slow connection or "page unavailable" errors when I've been trying to get on Facebook. I check mine every day, at least once a day and usually more. If that's addiction, then I guess I'm addicted.
It's interesting to think that only twenty or even fifteen years ago, social networking wasn't even a part of our lives, at least not our everyday interactions. When you consider how long things like paper, printing presses, telegrams, telephones and other forms of communication took to develop and -- then -- to take off, this is actually amazingly fast.
I am addicted to social networking... even if I hope never to use the phrase "tweet withdrawal".
it's so true. last semester, i interviewed a long-established immigrant here. when i asked her how she contacted her family when she first came to australia in the 1980s, she said it took at least 7 days to send a letter home. she said her generation is so good at waiting because they didn't have internet. but younger generations become very impatient and want everything fast because of the internet.young people are so addicted to everything the internet provides us. i can't imagine waiting 7 days for a word from my parents because MSN and emails are so instant and convenient.and i feel very uncomfortable if i can't use MSN for one day.
ReplyDeleteI agree about the addiction thing!
ReplyDeleteIt's a sort of medium about instant gratification. We don't have to work for what loads on the screen, and we want it now! All at the click of a mouse or simple stroke of a key, we expect the demands of our fingertips to be met instantly!
You're right. I think that times have changed and that people have become so used to sending and receiving instant messages and finding out information immediately.
ReplyDelete