Family Discussion

I recently posted a podcast on my blog about a discussion I had with my family about Facebook. The discussion was really interesting and got kind of heated at times. The most interesting part of the discussion for me was that almost everyone in the room hated Facebook but still logged on and used it multiple times a week. I think that is basically how social media works. Most or some of the people that use don't actually like the fact that they spend so much time using it. But we can't help it. It's addictive. As humans we are naturally curious about other people's lives. We want to know what they are doing, who they are with, what vacation they recently took and we definitely want to see all the pictures of them doing said activities. Facebook is the perfect place for us to find all of this information. But sometimes I think it's not really being nosey if the people are willingly posting the pictures and status updates about their recent activities. That is another reason Facebook works so well. People are curious about their friends or acquaintances and people want to post about whatever vacation they just took. Facebook users supply the information knowing full well there will be hundreds of people with access to their pictures and status updates. One of the other most interesting parts of my interviews was when my aunt said that her Facebook time replaced the time she used to spend watching the news. Facebook is more exciting to her because she relates better to Facebook. She can relate to one of her coworkers status updates better than she can to news of explosives over seas. Should we care more about Facebook and social media than what is going on outside our little worlds? Probably not. But we can't help what we are interested in. Somehow we all will just have to find a good balance between social media and current affairs.