About a
week into lock down I had conversation with my sister, who lives about 300 miles away from me and has three kids in their
early 20s, all back at home with their mummy & daddy for one
reason or another. I said that we were really lucky to have the
internet and social media to keep in touch with each other. She said
that it was a very negative medium because people/teenagers/children
would view the 'so called positive posts' as the norm and would feel
that they weren't living up to them.
My sister
was concerned that because the internet and social media were posting
all these positive posts of mummies doing spectacular things with
their kids and making the rest of the world feel inferior, it would
impact on the rest of the world who didn't have the same privileges.
My reaction was; 'that's life'. There's always going to be people in
the world that are richer, happier, live in bigger houses, have a
more so called perfect life than you.
However,
although social media and the internet may highlight these issues
more, they've always been there. There's always been bullying and
people who feel they're more important than others. Its just that
the internet and social media can do it in a more 'anonymous' way.
'Keyboard warriors'?? Don't you just hate them?
Personally
I think that the positives of social media and the internet outweigh
the negatives.
In 1987
when I lived in Canada for a year, I had absolutely no form of
communication with any friends or family back home, apart from
writing letters. The only time that my parents phoned me was on
Christmas Day. And to be honest I haven't a clue how much that cost.
International phone calls were really, really expensive at that time
so to make a phone call to somewhere abroad was only ever used in an
emergency or for a special occasion.
Fast forward to 2020. My 20 year old neice did one of these 'camp America' placements last year for 3 months. 3 months?! It's hardly a life time is it? In fact it wasn't even three months because my sister paid about £300 for her to change her flight and come home a couple of weeks early. Another 3 weeks and we'll have been in lock down for 3 months. My sister & neice were communicating almost on a daily basis, via whatsapp & Face Book etc, and when my neice told her mummy she wanted a 'care package' (apparently that's a box containing all the stuff from home that she was missing like chocolate) my sister obliged and sent one out. FFS?! Kids these days just haven't a clue. I can just imagine if I'd written a letter to my parents back in 1987 and asked for a 'care package'............... Firstly, the letter wouldn't have got to them for about 10 days. And secondly, my parents would have told me not to be so stupid. There is absolutely no way that they would have 'wasted money' and sent me a 'care box' containing bars of chocolate. I was in my 20s and I'd made the decision to live in Canada for a year so once I'd said goodbye to them, that was pretty much it for a year. Not so today. And I'm certainly not blaming the kids of today. They don't know any different. I got my first mobile phone and email address in 1999 which was the year my neice was born so she's obviously grown up with modern day technology. But, it does annoy me that kids in their 20s (& even their 30s) don't seem to be able to exsist these days without consulting mummy & daddy on every aspect of their life. And looking further back in history 14/15 year olds left school and got jobs and were responsible human beings. Not so today. Everyone seems to think they're a victim of one thing or the other. Oh dear, I'm going a bit off topic here. Sorry.
These
days, whatever you think of social media, the ability to easily keep
in touch with friends and family all around the world couldn't be
simpler. Can you imagine what the last couple of months would have
been like for single people if they hadn't had wifi as a form of
communication. We can talk to one person online or a group of
people. We can instantly see photos and videos of our friends and
family. We know immediately what everyone is up to.
However
the ability to connect to wifi does not come without it's problems.
Over the last couple of months, keyboard warriors as mentioned above,
seem to have become a lot more prevalent on certain Face Book pages.
I don't know what makes some people behave in such a nasty way when
commenting on various posts. I follow a few pages that have been set
up in tourist hot spots both at the beach and in the countryside and
to be honest some of the comments on these pages are disgusting.
Would people really behave in that way if they were faced with making
comments to people in real life. I suspect not. We've all read the
posts from locals who live in these tourist hot spots telling
tourists to stay home and not to visit their areas due to the
hospitals not being able to cope with an influx of ill people. And
then we get the visitors responding by saying that these communities
wouldn't survive without the tourists and because the locals have
been so horrible, once this is all over then they won't be visiting
ever again. And so it goes on and on and on.
And it's
not only these sort of posts that create bad feeling. Because
everything these days is done on line it's very, very, easy just to
post something in the heat of the moment without actually thinking it
through. Indeed I know of one elderly couple who had a visit from
the police because one of their neighbours had reported them for
having a family member to visit. As it happened, the family member
was just dropping shopping off on the doorstep because 'elderly couple' are in
the vulnerable group and not allowed out. If the so called nosey
neighbour had actually bothered to watch the whole interaction they
would have seen this. But no, they see a car drive up, the couples
daughter gets out and goes up the path to the house so nosey
neighbours just assumed she was going in. And immediately goes on line
to report them. And the upsetting thing about all this is that the
police are not allowed to tell the couple who it was that reported
them, so after living for more than 20 years in what they thought was
a friendly neighbourhood, they now don't know who they can trust. If
people hadn't had wifi, perhaps they might have taken a step back and
actually asked these people why their daughter was visiting.
However I
personally see social media and the internet as a positive addition
to my life. I for one, would be lost without it, and for me it has
been in godsend in these days of social isolation. I guess it all
comes down to how you use it. After all, if you're on a social media
site and you don't like what's been written, then you don't have to
read it.
See you
all tomorrow.
Toodles.
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