So, what’s keeping the teen-youth scene abuzz these days? First a little history
Technology has brought to us so many wonderful changes and some not so wonderful; it has opened to us a window of endless possibilities. As a matter of fact, it has broken down walls and introduced us to an infinite world of communication.
First, there was the introduction of the telegraph, no longer did one have to sit by the table and draft that long tedious letter that would only reach the addressee weeks even months after it was posted.
Now you just send in a short brief, straight to the point message that would be delivered instantly. Then it started getting very frustrating because the word limitation did not allow you to say all you wanted to say and, in no time at all, the telephone was invented.
With the telephone you could sit and talk for hours, there were no longer any restrictions on how many words you could say in a minute.
There was also the invention of the television that meant you could watch movies at home and talk to your friend over the phone about it and discover new lands that you never knew existed.
Then came the computer and people could just type their assignments instead of using the old pen and paper, and while everyone was still amazed by this new technological development, along came the ever so popular internet. Together these two were an unstoppable pair. And that, as my mother would say, is where it all went wrong.
The television, telephone and computer had already messed up the social order of every society.
Parents could barely converse with their children because they were busy with either something on television, an ‘important’ conversation on the telephone or just on the top level of some computer game and could not stop even for a moment because they were scared it might mess their top score.
But with the introduction of the internet, things went from being bad to worse; well, depending on how you look at it or, should I say, which side of the age margin you are placed.
The internet brought the world at your finger tips and you never had to wait for the evening bulletin to find out what has happened in France. It was exciting and it just seemed to get better.
It catered for everyone and was making globalization an achievable thing. It started seeing how it could cater for everyone, and one of the ways that the youth have been catered for is through social media.
Before that, there was an introduction of blogs but blogs were not for everyone and very few people stayed interested in them but social networking on the other hand proved to be a winner.
With your Friendster, High5, Badoo, Facebook and Twitter, the whole world was abuzz and everybody was connecting with anybody from any and every part of the world.
But the ones that really made it are Facebook and Twitter. For the longest time, I resisted being part of these social clubs because I saw no point to them and every time someone asked me what my facebook name or twitter i.d were I said I wasn’t on any of the two. I was looked at like I was something out of this world, and not in a good way either.
Social media has made being anti social quiet social, because you don’t need to talk to the person you are sitting next to when you can write on their facebook wall, tweet them or send them a private message. A smile has been replaced by a poke on facebook and a retweet says i like the way you think.
Making friends is so much easier even for an introvert, because you can either send a friendship request or follow someone and if they accept the request or follow you back then you are friends, well at least when you are online but it’s a different story when walking down the street and you pass the person without even as much as an uncomfortable glance.
The more popular you are the more friends and followers you will have, and most of the popular ones start requesting people and following back but with popularity you don’t have to do so, you are no more part of team follow back.
The invention of smart phones means you can now be online all the time, which means you maintain your social life without even meeting a single person or walking outside the door.
If you feel you have made a connection or your friendship with someone on twitter or facebook has grown enough you can now add them to skype where you can talk to them in private, or you can make a group call and add all those people who are ‘close’ to you and with a webcam you get to see how each one of them looks like because it’s not all of us who put up our real pictures on these social networks.
Skype allows you to talk and see your friends even when they are overseas, you never have to leave the comfort of your home to make friends and feel like you have an active social life. You can be a social butterfly all from the comfort of your couch, couch potato social butterfly, who would have ever thought that would ever be possible.
I think you are pretty interesting, how about we be friends? Follow me and will follow back or just add me on facebook and send me an inbox to let me know it’s you.
