Where do you draw the line? First things first, what is "real life"? "Real life" on the internet refers to life in the real world. The real world is where things actually exist. The internet, therefore, is a place of fiction and fantasy (for the most part). Life online is known as virtual reality. Distinguishing what happens on and off online is easy, because users use the acronym "IRL" meaning "in real life" opposed to life online.
Now that you know how I am distinguishing the two worlds ("real life" and the internet), where do you spend the majority of your time? While you are not busy with work, school or other leisure activities, do you find yourself spending majority of your free time using the computer or cell phone? Where are you spending your free time online? Your list may include: Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter just to name a few. How many hours are you spending uploading, posting, commenting, tweeting or blogging? The Internet seems to have such an impact on us that I find most of the time our body may be in the "real" world, but our minds are usually thinking about what we read/saw online.
I know personally every time I pick up my BlackBerry (cell phone) I check my e-mail and my Facebook. With almost every phone on the market being a Smart Phone it makes it very easy to stay in touch. Having the internet at home and especially on the go, thanks to my cell phone, if I want to know something my first response while pulling my BlackBerry out of my pocket is, "[let's] Google it."
The time I spend online, whether it is on a laptop, Desktop or cell phone is an average of 4-5 hours a day. Some may not spend that much time online or maybe it is roughly the same. For some it may surpass my hours drastically. Some days I can spend 5 hours straight online and then all of a sudden I realize how much time I just wasted. I know I didn't accomplish much, if anything if I see all that time spent online as wasted. We update, post, tweet, upload pictures and videos and people respond back to us or least we hope they will. Is this really communicating with others? Being with each other without actually being with each other "IRL"?
Maybe it is time to take a step back and realize just how intertwined "real life" and the time we spend online are. Is this a good thing or is this a bad thing? Only you can answer the question. I hope over the course of this blog you will be able to evaluate the time you spend between these two worlds and be able to answer this question.
In my next blog I will be looking at the Websites and social networks the majority of us spend our time. More specifically, looking at how Facebook, YouTube, Skype, Blogs and a few others on how we use them in our lives and "learn" about others.
This is a really interesting and complex idea. Good luck with it, I look forward to reading more. Maybe you will figure out why the internet is so addicting to us. I mean I know when I find myself looking through things on the internet for hours on end I end up feeling guilty, but then a few days later it just happens again. I've heard people refer to the internet as the drug for our generation, maybe this is true?
ReplyDeleteI never realized how much time I thought about things I saw or heard on the internet. Many conversations I feel that I have revolve around what someone saw on the internet. It makes me wonder what would happen if the internet crashed for a day. Might be a very long and boring day.....
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