Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn are just some names of social media, where you can put your profile, opinion or comments on whatever you like and interact with others that can be friends, class mates or unknown people.
We have created even virtual world “Second Life” where you can create your digital alter-ego (avatar) and interact with other users of the program.
Only Facebook reports 350 million active users and 35 million people who update their status everyday (Facebook statistics).
With all these new media, the time spent on the web is keeping on increasing and more people are at risk of developing a Internet Addiction Disorder, meaning an excessive use of the web that impacts on daily life. This “disease” has not been recognized in the US but at the same time all around the world more and more centers have been developed to cure it (recently one in Rome , Italy at the Gemelli hospital, one in Fall City , Washington state, and some in China
I was shocked to read in the Chicago Tribune that few months ago in
Those events spotted out the extreme methods some Chinese country-side centers use to wean children off the Internet that include electric shock and antidepressants. It is incredible that someone can “cure” such “simple” disease with these terrible methods even in the 21st century.
I think it is very important to know and use the new media to interact with many different people, not only for networking but also to be always updated on what is going on around the world (blogs and Twitter can be faster ways to receive or release news). Moreover, the social media create new business opportunities and settings, for example with Facebook you can deliver information or ideas to a target that is already interested in you. New rules will be developed in communication disciplines like marketing, advertising and public relations.
We still have to find a good balance: the digital experience should not have the upper hand on the real life. We need to find gratification from ourselves mainly in the earth planet not in a virtual one.
Unfortunately, the spreading of I Phones and Blackberries making the web so accessible, increases the risk of developing “internet addiction”, that causes depression and even physical and psychological weakening.
My 84 year-old friend still doesn’t understand how I can have 130 friends in Facebook without knowing all of them and how everybody knew so fast I bought a new sofa. She still prefers reading newspapers everyday, watching the news on TV and hanging out with her few close friends.
Sometimes I wonder if her “slow pace”, no technological world is better than the fast and stressful digital one.
