When today’s generation goes out to have a good evening, an allotted amount of time is set aside for quiet updates to every social media alert available. If they’re at a party they’re recording video for their vlog on YouTube and possible posting a short post about the whole event on their blog. They take a picture of their drink or fancy meal with Instagram which links it to their Twitter account and then posts to their Tumblr, tags them into Foursquare, and then posts to their Facebook. But if you’re not up on your social media game, people just find you to be strange.
Apparently some employers do a double take if they can’t find your mug on Facebook and a number of psychiatrists consider an absence on Facebook as abnormal. But why is it so important to join the herd of 955 million individuals on Facebook?
“The Internet has become a natural part of life,” psychologist Christopher Moeller told Germany’s Der Taggspiegel. “It’s possible that you get feelings of positive feedback through online friends.”
The sign of online life is apparently a litmus test for sanity. Your potential employer assumes that any absence from the popular site came as a result from an account that had so much offensive material that it had to be deleted. Ninety percent of recruiters check for your profile online, so if you’re not currently being forced to accept the Timeline layout then you may not end up receiving a job.
My question about all of this is does not having a Facebook actually classify people as insane? I personally don’t whole-heartedly agree that contributing to the Facebook community is a legitimate reflection of a healthy social life, but I do sort of see why many would think this way.
Facebook and other forms of social media have developed somewhat into the equivalent of electric lights. Humans were obviously fine before with wax candles and the innovative aid, that is now huge part of our lives, is completely unnecessary when we have more naturally occurring sources of light such as the sun or the burning flames of fire. Facebook isn’t necessary when we have cellphones, email, and the good old fashion face-to-face conversation, but like electric lights it has made out lives easier.
Like I mentioned on my old blog, Jasmine on the Issues:
“We are the nation that put cars in driveways and computers in offices; the nation of Edison and the Wright brothers; of Google and Facebook,” said Obama during his State of the Union Address to Congress and the American public on Tuesday, Jan. 25. “In America, innovation doesn’t just change our lives. It’s how we make a living. It’s about a rural community in Iowa or Alabama where farmers and small business owners will be able to sell their products all over the world. It’s about a firefighter who can download the design of a burning building onto a handheld device; a student who can take classes with a digital textbook; or a patient who can have face-to-face video chats with her doctor.”
Facebook is just our next helpful tool that has been embedded in the use of society. It makes sense that it would be considered important and that psychiatrists and employers would assume that anyone without a Facebook account was “abnormal,” but not any reason to lose out on a job position. Sometimes people just don’t want to be bothered, right?
That’s just my opinion though. What’s yours?
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