Too much information running through my brain
Too much information driving me insane
Sting 1981

Have you seen these posts on your social media?
At home depot
At target
Eating at bagel shop
At bank
Showering

Did you recognize some of those posts as yours? Have you asked yourself why we need to tell people where we are, and what we are doing?
If celebrities posted like we do about where they are , this would be exciting– Scarlett Johansson is at the dry cleaners.- drop off or pick up?. Tom Hanks is at Cluck U Chicken—wondering what he ordered? Bill Wilson just went to the Denville AA meeting(I’d pay to see that since he died in 1971). I haven’t seen TMZ follow me to the dry cleaners—(shirts, pants an occasional sport jacket if you really wanted to know).
It seems that the social media phenomenon is creating a group of people who want to be the next reality stars– the next Duck Dynasty, the next Kardashians or worse the next Ice Road Truckers, or Moonshiners? These reality “stars” tells us that anybody can get on a television show in spite of how little talent they have. The dumbing and numbing of society!
We’ve even lowered our standards of fame—it used to be 15 minutes, now 15 seconds will suffice! 140 characters of twitter gold and the entire universe can know your immediate thoughts on ARod, the NSA, Snow, the NFL or Obamacare. But do we really care? And what’s the impact of all of this connection on our real interpersonal connections. If I’m wired to the universe do I miss out on right here right now, in the moment, living?
Sherry Turkle, a Harvard psychologist, is a prolific writer about social media and society. She conducted a Ted Talk entitled “Connected But Alone” in 2012. Her points in this talk are worth paying attention to:

It’s amazing to me that we are creating a society of non-interpersonal communicators who are happy to tell us about  all of their low intimacy behaviors. If we do not have personal, intimate conversations with others, then we lack depth as people. It’s a new year and time to make some changes happen, so the next time you want to tweet or Facebook or text someone, how about using some old school technology—TALK.

Happy New Year-

change is possible