Social media: life in snippets
Social media is about sharing life in snippets. On the way down to a football tournament with my son, I was taking video and pictures to send back to my wife. While I could not share a great deal of detail, I was able to piece together enough snippets to give her a sense of the place and what is going on there. She could then imagine the rest.
When I read status on facebook or follow a string of tweets, I get snippets of my friends’ lives. I realized with this experience, that for most, I know little about the rest of their lives. For a few, I know enough to fill in the blanks.
Is that good enough? Are we comfortable diluting our relationships down to those snippets that can fit into a 30 sec video, or 140 character tweet, of a facebook update?
This is at once a personal question and a broader social question. I enjoy seeing what old high school classmates are up to. But sometimes, they post things that clearly show that they are simultaneously connected with me ( a long time unseen person), and (I hope) close knit friends. I have little to no context for the status, while others can fill in the blanks.
I believe snippets are a great way to reconnect across the distances of time and geography. But, we need to take care not to allow them to increase the distances between us. Status updates are not the same as conversations. Video and pictures are not the same as shared experiences. Social networks are not the same as social life. When your friends send you a snippet of their life, do you have the context to fill in the blanks?
