My mother stopped in as I was watching Bridezillas on TLC. A young bride was swearing at her parents and demanding more and more. My mother said, “If I had spoken to my father that way…”. She’s right, when I was a kid you never talked to elders the way young people do today. I can remember a certain family member or two taking advantage of the fact that I was a child and treating me terribly. I think this generation is struggling between respecting their elders and themselves. It seems that the members of Generation Y are saying, “I’ll give you respect if you respect me, otherwise all bets are off. “We checked out a fan page for this show on Facebook where a Grandmother was talking about the very same epiphany my mother came to earlier. A young woman in her 20’s was swearing and said “shut up old lady”.
As privacy decreases online, how will this effect your behavior? Even if you agreed with this young woman would you really want your “friends” or coworkers see you talk to someone in this manner? Or do you think it’s justified?
We all know that everyone is a product of their environment. Circumstantial life events, influences, and surroundings can further change our behavior. Social media already highly influences our shopping, relationships, and education. But how large of a role does networking through social media play into our lives? Maybe more than any of us realize.
Although exceptions exist, research suggests that most social networks primarily support pre-existing social relations. For the most part, Facebook is used to maintain existing offline relationships or solidify offline connections, as opposed to meeting new people. These relationships may be weak ties, but typically there is some common offline element among individuals who friend one another, such as a shared class at school.
We like to think that we are largely in control of our day-to-day lives, yet most of what we do, from what we eat to who we sleep with, and even the way we feel, is significantly influenced by those around us’ and those around them, and those around them. Our actions can change the behaviors, the beliefs, and even the basic health of people we’ve never met. In a subtle fashion, social networks help spread contagions; create “epidemics” of obesity, smoking and substance abuse, disseminate fads and markets, alter voting patterns, and more.
Social networks can harbor a flow of generally undesirable things such as anger and sadness, unhappiness, but good things also flow like happiness, love, altruism, and valuable information.
Fast forward five years will you be more open with your life if privacy vanishes completely or will you avoid social media all together? And how do you feel about people telling your grandma to shut up…when she joins Facebook?
So, why do you do what you do? (Please share in the comments below)
