Mia Taylor

It is amazing how dependent we have become on knowing where people are and what they’re doing at all times.

I’m going to step aside from the majority here and explain why I believe this to be true.

To my knowledge Facebook seems to have kicked-off this obsession and Myspace soon followed right behind. Now, communities like Twitter and Hi5, fall under the same spell and more than ever people are becoming obsessed with broadcasting their personal lives.

What has happened to a society that valued their personal lives?

Someone recently sent me a link to a video on YouTube that I believe couldn’t better portray the idea that often times “Status Updates” are taken a little too far.

Mia is “waking up.” Mia is “brushing her teeth.” Mia is “talking on the phone with her boyfriend.” Mia is “Putting her laundry out for everyone to see.” Now, I understand the benefit of broadcasting to co-workers on Twitter or Facebook that you’re going to be late for a meeting, or even updating your status that you might be going out of town, but some of the updates seem unnecessarily forward. People now broadcast who they think you should vote for, that they are mad/sad/suicidal and even that they are intoxicated.

Don’t get me wrong, I have deffinitely had my days of status-update obessions, but those days are gone and now I can look critically at what it does for your life. What do you get from broadcasting your every move?

About four or five months ago I was waiting for an appointment and picked up a newspaper from the seat next to me. As I opened the newspaper I noticed a service called Loopt that “transforms your mobile phone into a social compass.” I was apalled. Now, you can track where your friends are located via a mobile map on your cellphone. With the Loopt service, you must be a registerred member of Loopt in order to broadcast your geographical location, however, even when you’re not logged on to the site, your position is still being broadcasted.

We have placed such emphasis on connecting with people that in reality, people seem to be less connected. When I was a Facebook status-update addict, I found that people were less inclined to call and see what I was up to during the weekend because they already knew. I found that people would see all my “geo-tagged” and “friend-tagged” photos and instead of making direct contact to talk about their weekend, they would leave comments on my profile instead. Call me old fashioned, but I believe that commenting on walls, photo comments and status updates aren’t as personal as directly connecting via phone or even text messaging.

From here, as technology improves, it is my belief that people will only become less connected with others on a personal level, no matter how personal our status updates are.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 3rd, 2008 at 7:45 am and is filed under Here and Now. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.