Do We Overuse Social Media?

You might have noticed, for a few hours Wednesday morning that Facebook was at least lagging if not completely down.

At the time, it was kind of irritating. I was in the middle of doing part of my job, which involves scheduling the posts you see on our Facebook page throughout the day. I am sure many others were panicking as well.

If it had happened at a more convenient time, such an outage might have been a good thing, because it might have forced people to find other things to do, like, you know, TALK to each other. What did we do BEFORE Facebook existed anyway? It makes you think: don't we use too much social media? How much is too much? It's an age-old question that I don't have an answer to, but what it boils down to is once the panic subsided and I confirmed it was a widespread issue, not just on my end, I wasn't going to get disciplined for slacking on my job or anything, because it was Facebook's fault--and the world certainly didn't end. Find out more about the outage and what caused it HERE.

I know a lot of people have gotten really burnt out on social media usage the past couple years due to escalating political hostilities. Everyone has an opinion, which they are entitled to, but the problem is, it's now way too easy for everyone to express and publicize that opinion. I told my boss and a co-worker last week, if I didn't have to use it for work, I'd cut down my Facebook usage a lot. Their response was basically: "Yeah, right". They weren't wrong. It makes it way too easy to keep in touch with family and  friends. (And to play Farmville or find out what flavor of soda you should drink based on your astrological sign). When you use it right, it's an amazing thing. Just don't get too attached and let it consume you so that a brief outage like today's feels like an eternity. "Moderation", I believe they call it.

I would love to hear your thoughts about how our social media habits have changed over the years. Share your thoughts in the comments.

[Via Reuters]