For the past 5 or 6 years, I have found myself increasingly interested in understanding how technology and instant communication have created a sense of dependency and expectations that are often unhealthy. Whether it be checking your phone every 5 minutes to see who has (or hasn't) texted you or linking every social network to your BlackBerry or iPhone in order to constantly know when your friends are doing...well, anything, I am far from thinking this interconnectedness has added a healthy dimension to our lives. And then, along came Twitter. A social networking and microblogging application created in 2006, Twitter essentially allows an individual or company to broadcast any detail of their lives at any point to a mass audience, or their "followers." While I have not used Twitter extensively, I have had many opportunities to observe friends and my employer (The Blake School) use it for a variety of reasons. Watching my friend A use it, he alternates between two uses - one is when he has a "profound" thought or idea that he wants to put out there for his friends to respond to, the other is for the basic reason of just announcing what he is doing, even down to brushing his teeth. Blake uses it primarily for communications with parents and alumni, announcing newsworthy events, reminding people of upcoming plays, etc., and to alert the community of emergencies and school closures. Most of the people I have witnessed using Twitter as well as those I "follow" use Twitter as a train of thought broadcast forum. Whether it is to announce the purchase of a new car or to declare a hatred for the kid next door, Twitter is used to announce just about anything. And I do feel like that is what it is - - announcing. My questions remain in the usage of such services - when did we become so self-important that we think everyone wants to know everything we are thinking and doing AND why are we so damn interested in everything people are thinking and doing??
I asked around and searched a bit for to try to figure out why some people use Twitter so religiously. Here are some of the answers I received:
1. Twitter allows people to feel like they are one step ahead of everyone else in receiving information. While this reasoning has some validity, it reeks of unhealthy competition - the whole "I know something you don't know" mentality. The prospect of having real-time news updates is appealing to me as I am a news junky, but I feel as though Twitter could allow for the fast spreading of false or inaccurate information. Many news outlets have Twitter or Twitter-like services that do provide these instant updates, which is nice (although I don't recall the world ever coming close to ending when we had to wait to get home to read the paper or read the news). I will never understand, however, why I would need to know what Ashton Kutcher is up to on a daily basis.
2. Twitter can allow instant feedback on new products and/or ideas. Okay, this has some valid points, as well. I do like the idea of using Twitter to keep the pulse on a consumer market without having to always commence a study group or formal investigation of product use and like/dislike. In situations like this, it allows consumers to have a more immediate effect on the way news and information is being communicated.
3. Twitter create opportunities for people to try on new identities and ideas. Instead of the once a day "water cooler" conversation with coworkers, Twitter allows individuals to communicate with a variety of different audiences throughout the day, about a variety of different topics. I do like this aspect of Twitter and the possibilities it has for creating some great circles for critical thinking. However, it does have major downfalls in that this forum is commonly used to gossip. And I hate gossip.
There doesn't seem to be just one type of person that uses Twitter, as is similar to Facebook and Myspace, but it is most appealing to younger audiences who have created this sort of addiction to one another and social networking. Older people, in general, still have the patience to wait and receive information when it is convenient for them - not as it becomes available. But chances are that sometime in the next year I will be eating my own words as I use Twitter to send tweets to students and teachers, alike.
No comments:
Post a Comment