Here Comes Everybody

I just finished reading the first 3 chapters of our book, and I am left feeling blown away by the amount of connections we can have with people all around the world due to technology today. You kind of take it for granted when you use various social media resources daily, but when you sit down and think about it, it's pretty amazing!

My friend just moved to a tiny town in Louisiana a month after having her first baby. She decided to start a blog to keep family and friends in the loop of her life. At first I didn't think much of it, but now I check in on it often! I also routinely check up on my "friends'" facebook status updates every morning. I don't know what I am looking for, but now that I have an iPhone, I do it just as religiously as I check my email. I find myself bringing information I would have NEVER known about others into conversations. Example: "I heard (insert name of someone from high school I haven't seen or talked to in years) just got engaged, moved to Washington, etc., etc." "Wow, I never saw that coming..."

The ability to learn about others and/or communicate has changed so much for the good and sometimes (in the case of Sasha in chapter 1) the bad. I can't imagine my life before the Internet, but we didn't have it in my house until I was in high school on dial up. I just started taking up photography as a hobby and LOVE that I can send my pictures to friends and family to view and comment on as they wish. My big question is: Is our technological world of connecting and communicating making our life easier or harder?

Tags: socialmedia101

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Comment by Drew McAllister on March 22, 2010 at 12:12pm: I like your questions, Christy, and I agree with Hilary -- it's a bit of both! I think Hilary's comment about the "connected" impulse is very similar to the image from Jeff Utecht I shared in my presentation -- the 'peak' occurs when he began to feel stressed about his level of 'connectedness' to his online network. It's easy to begin thinking "I'm going to miss something!" and run back to the computer/phone/internet-enabled gadget. For me, balancing this impulse has been an important task over the last few months. Most recently, it's meant I 'unplugged' over spring break. I'm willing to be less "in-the-know" in order to fly a kite with my family (literally). :) How have you found balance?

Comment by Christy Prudence on March 24, 2010 at 4:53pm: Hilary and Drew,
I feel the same way about technology being a blessing and a curse at this point. I am recently married, and I have already heard more than once to get off the computer!!! Balance is really hard for me to have because I am a natural multi-tasker. I am often cooking dinner, watching the news on TV, and checking my email on my iPhone at once! Talk about overload! I have to make an effort to keep my Internet gadgets away from me when relaxing. I guess that's how I find the balance; making time to unplug!

Comment by Janice Burroughs on March 25, 2010 at 11:17am: Christy,
I agree with you. I also find I have an overwhelming number of connections, and then I see that some of the students we teach have 1200+ connections on FB. I cannot imagine! Are they keeping up with that many "friends" as well or better than they keep up with homework and other responsibilities? Is that why it is so hard to pry their cell phones out of their hands these days? As for me, I do feel overwhelmed, under water, and at times guilty if I do not keep up with others, post a few lines, click "like" or return an e-mail or text message. Think of the access others have to us. Does anyone else feel overwhelmed?

Comment by Allan Foster on March 25, 2010 at 1:25pm: From a report on CNET at http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-10440330-17.html.

Sorry, Facebook friends: Our brains can't keep up

Robin Dunbar, a professor of evolutionary anthropology at Oxford University, developed a theory in the 1990s dubbed Dunbar's Number. The theory contends that the human brain is only capable of managing relationships--staying in contact at least once per year and knowing how friends relate to others--with about 150 people.
Until recently, it was believed that that only pertained to "offline" relationships.
Dunbar has now decided to shift focus to see whether Facebook has changed the number. It hasn't.
"The interesting thing is that you can have 1,500 friends, but when you actually look at traffic on sites, you see people maintain the same inner circle of around 150 people that we observe in the real world," Dunbar told the London-based Sunday Times. "People obviously like the kudos of having hundreds of friends but the reality is that they're unlikely to be bigger than anyone else's."
For now, Dunbar's study is in its preliminary stages, meaning more testing needs to be done. Regardless, Dunbar doesn't believe that anything will change: no matter how many thousands of friends we might have on Facebook, we can't manage relationships with more than 150 of them.

We need to focus on what makes a connection meaningful to the connected individuals.

Comment by Christy Prudence on March 25, 2010 at 3:28pm: Allan, That study is SO interesting! I have probably 1,000 friends on facebook, but don't think I even stay in contact with 150 of them! I am guilty of being a snoop when it comes to wondering what people are up to when I haven't seen them in a while, but I would never email or call to find out the information. I just watch it feed into my facebook account. The people I truly care about, I call and email with regularly!!!

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