Failing the Test

Social Media has taken over our lives. We rely on Twitter to voice our every thought, whether it should be spoken or not. Facebook is how we share the events, major and minor, of our days. Instagram is our daily and sometimes more often snapshot of our activities. Texting has surpassed having an actual conversation with another person.

We use our smartphones to save all our contacts and phone numbers, so no one must use their memory skills to remember even their own phone number. We have online calendars to plan our days and busy schedules. We use Google Maps to get us to the grocery store and back.

But has this improved our lives or made us more isolated? With Social Media, we can update our status, letting all our “friends” know that we have had a “good/bad” day, what we’ve had for dinner and with whom. We tell the world that we have been waiting in line for an “eternity” or a clerk didn’t smile big enough at us, because that is so important. We have gone to such extremes to post our lives minute by minute, that we have nothing to talk about when we are face to face with another person.

My birthday was this month and I tried something, I made my birthday private, only visible to me. I thought that this way I wouldn’t get birthday wishes from people who don’t really know me or even care about me, but I would get birthday wishes from family and close friends, because I was sure that those would remember. Well I was wrong, only three family members and one friend remembered.

So much for that experiment, what did it prove? That I wasn’t important enough to be remembered, or that everyone is so busy that no one had time to call? Or have we become so dependent on Social Media, that if we don’t get a notification of some calendar event, it doesn’t exist? Maybe what’s more important, is why do I care?