meditations of a blueberry

A little over 9 years ago, I was laughing and rolling my eyes when my friend told me about this website called "Facebook." "Like I'd join that," I said. "I will stick with MySpace." Little did I know. Shortly after that conversation, I gave in and joined when I was at the university curriculum lab procrastinating doing a project. Soon the addiction took over. And before I knew it, everyone I knew was on Facebook, even my Nana. Now, Facebook has evolved into this amazing tool to be used to keep in touch and to feel like part of a community. But there does come a price. Sometimes we share openly and honestly about our lives, sometimes we don't. Sometimes we share only the good parts of our lives, creating this illusion that everything is perfect in our world. This not only hurts others as they inevitably compare their lives to a nonexistent perfect life, but ourselves as we are not being open with our lives. This is why I insist on being an open...

Ever feel like this after reading something online? What is it about the internet that seems to fuel fights? I have both seen and experienced the issues that come from the written word being taken the wrong way. People have been hurt, and are hurt daily, due to the way someone worded a comment, blog post, or email. It can be so hard to know how someone means something when you don't have their voice and body language to help. What drives me crazy about this issue, is that we KNOW this. Social media has been around for quite awhile in some form or another; it's not like we are still "getting to know it."  That being said, there are people in older generations that have just discovered how great Facebook is for keeping in touch, and may not be as "internet savvy" as my generation. I get that, and I tend to give my parent's generation a little more leeway (but not my parents, we have had a computer and been connected for as long as you COULD be connecte...