“The value of a social network is defined not only by who's on it, but by who's excluded," renowned technology forecaster Paul Saffo said. His quote has proven to be the right motivation to start this post.
Social networking has become a necessary evil in people’s lives despite the fact that an overdose of online communication can potentially harm “real” friendships.
Gone are the days when people had to exchange pleasantries to initiate a conversation and ask after their friends to inquire about their well-being. Liking a person’s picture or status message serves the same purpose while obviating textual / verbal communication in most situations. Technology is friendly enough to let us choose who we want to share our updates with and we have all evolved to reap its benefits.
On the grayer side, the liberty to take that extra sneak-peek into other people’s lives only encourages the typical user to get addicted to the site and spend several hours scrolling through potentially insignificant feeds. Studies from ComScore have shown that an average reader would spend 13 minutes a month to get updates on current events when compared to a whopping 169 minutes spent on checking Facebook every month.
A friend actually took a month’s break from Facebook and testified later to have become a conclusive proof for the theory that time saved on one addictive website is always spent on another.
I’ll sign off on that note and return with more posts in the near future. I hope you all have an enjoyable reading experience.
