I have a love-hate relationship with social media.
On the one hand, I love how easy it is to use apps like Twitter and Facebook. With my cellphone, I can take a photo of my dog doing something cute - does she ever do anything else? - send it out to my paltry amount of followers on Twitter (@CattleDogLady in case you were interested) and see it mirrored for my friends on Facebook, thanks to an app that lets me post tweets to my wall.
But on the other hand, I can't stand when the husband ignores my very important in-person comments about how awesome Rainn Wilson (@RainnWilson) is because he's busy tweeting, texting, Facebooking or on BlackBerry Messenger.
If you're not already on social media, your population is in decline. Consider this: More than 465 million people use Twitter, including seven million Canadians. An estimated one million accounts are added to Twitter every day.
Facebook has 845 million active users, including 18 million in Canada, of which more than two million are in B.C.
Canadians have an average of 190 Facebook "friends" each, and spend 20 minutes a day sharing data with them. Isn't that the amount of time Health Canada recommends exercising to keep us fit and healthy? I don't think finger calisthenics count.
The fact is, except for maybe Google Plus, social media will continue to grow. Not even television can claim the type of revolution social media has experienced; it took 13 years for the worldwide television audience to reach 50 million people, but Facebook had 200 million users in less than a year.
Despite my love-hate relationship with social media, the fact is, I'm on it and I see value, if not necessity, in being there. And I shake my head a little when I'm in the company of people who proudly boast about their lack of any kind of social media presence. You know the type - that salt-of-theearth individual who 15 years ago vowed never to buy a cellphone and now reluctantly owns a clunky flip device with a pay-as-you-go card.
Last week, I attended a couple of education seminars on social media and communication, and was stricken by the stark contrast in the instructors' messages. One suggested that our inclination to so willingly and without limits connect with complete strangers interferes with the real bonds and relationships we could have with those who are actually close to us.
The second promoted the benefits of social media personally, professionally and socially.
Both instructors had legitimate arguments and both were right.
Like anything, social media is a tool that needs to be used appropriately.
Any tool can cause harm in the wrong hands or when used for the wrong reasons; I wouldn't want to be around Jason Voorhees when he's wielding a chainsaw, but it's sure nice that my neighbour has one to help free the deadheads that get stuck under our float home.
The bottom line is that social media is here to stay and if you're not on it, at least learn what it is and respect what it does. You don't have to tweet, but you should know what it means.
