I’m not on Facebook. There I’ve admitted it and I kind of feel better. Some, or everyone, might be saying “oh, you’re the one,” or even “how could anybody NOT be on Facebook?”
Maybe there’s a support group for those of us not on Facebook. You know where you get together face to face and complain how nobody actually talks to anybody anymore and pine for the good old days when people actually called each other and chatted on the phone, you know the one connected to the wall in the kitchen.
But then again I might be the only one in the world not on Facebook. Well, I think my parents aren’t either but I don’t know if that’s enough to qualify for a support group, plus I see them occasionally anyway.
I know everyone in the office is because they check it, oh, several times a day, and tell me stuff they learned via Facebook.
In fact I may not be on Facebook but The Morning Star is so check it out, let me know what you think. Um, you’d have to e-mail me or call me to do that, though, of course.
My kids are on Facebook, of course. How could they not be?
The other day one of my kids was watching the hockey game on television with me. Well he was sort of watching the game on TV with me.
He had his laptop propped up in front of him, on the table in front of the TV, and he was doing something on his cell phone at the same time. Talk about being connected, after all he might miss something.
I assume he was texting someone while he had Facebook open on his computer all the while sort of glancing at the TV from time to time.
I attempted to talk to him several times but realized he was so plugged into cyberspace that he had no clue what the guy five feet over was saying in real life (or is that real time?). Heavy sigh.
However, he did surface occasionally to tell me that his buddies were texting him (or is it tweeting him?) when someone scored in the game in case he missed what was going on right in front of him in the room. Isn’t modern technology wonderful?
Does anyone remember growing up a long time ago in the dark ages when our parents would bug us to get off the phone with our friends cause they wanted to use it, or they would exclaim loudly from another room: “Get off the phone, someone important might be trying to get a hold of us.”
Like what we were talking about wasn’t important? Anyway these days if the landline (that’s what they call the phone that plugs into the wall now) actually rings, it ain’t for the kids. In fact it’s either a telemarketer or someone for mom or dad, which means it don’t ring too often. And if there’s a delay before someone says something on the other end, it ain’t for mom or dad so act accordingly.
It also makes it a lot more difficult to monitor your kids’ communication network, if you actually had a desire to do such a thing. Obviously you can’t yell at them to get off the phone anymore, and who knows when they’re actually texting or tweeting or e-mailing or whatever’s nexting to their buddies? Let alone what the communication actually consists of?
I do tell them that cyberspace is open to everyone so don’t post anything that you wouldn’t want your grandma to see, or even your own grandkids for that matter, as this stuff is eternal and can come back to haunt you. Hopefully that scares them sufficiently enough.
I don’t know, maybe I’m just bitter that some Harvard nerd named Mark Zuckerberg invented Facebook in 2004, initially as a way of rating girls on campus, and eventually got rich and transformed the way the world communicates. And, well, I didn’t.
Heavy sigh. Oh well maybe one day I’ll break down and check out what all the fuss is about. Or maybe I’ll wait it out. Do you think it’s going to last?
—Glenn Mitchell is the managing editor for The Morning Star
