"Excuse Me for Being Old-fashioned"

I have very deep concerns about Facebook and what it's doing to our society. I know it's a wonderful way to make friends from around the world – although I've managed to do that with email.

What concerns me is this inclination to only have “virtual friends.” People are isolating themselves. Where are their face-to-face friends? Where are the friends they used to chat with by phone? What's with this constant texting? One line of bad spelling is a conversation?

Everything is completely impersonal, now. Yet, it's addictive and intrusive. While folks are out to lunch or with any friends at all, anywhere, they're texting and fooling around with other “friends” they don't even know. How rude can you get? It's as if they don't dare miss a message. What the hell's going to happen if they do? It's just incredibly stupid.

Do you know your next door neighbor? Probably not. And, why would anyone want to tell complete strangers the story of their life on Facebook? They don't even know who they're “talking” to.

Not to mention that all this information they're putting out there can come back and bite them in the butt at any time. It's costing people jobs – causing court cases to be lost – and who knows what else!

It amuses me to see the people worrying about Facebook's privacy policies all the while they're posting inappropriate material about themselves for the entire world to see. They tell things they should have better sense than to tell anyone but a closest friend - a real friend. Facebook people are not their friends!

Last week, I saw a commercial for a car that “allows you to use all your social media hands free.” WHAT?! I don't care whether you're using your hands, or not – how safe a driver are you while you're using social media at all? UNbelieveable!

Excuse me for being old-fashioned, but when push comes to shove – at least in the USA – folks will be cut off from the internet and they're going to wish they had real flesh and blood friends to turn to.

Social media, carried to the extremes it's been carried to, has done little but isolate folks – and put them in grave danger.