Once upon a time, when Apple and Blackberry were just fruit...

There was this time that Eve found an apple and Adam only scratched his blackberries. Okay seriously. In those days apples and blackberries had the only purpose to grow and to be eaten. Nowadays we are eaten by them, metaphorically speaking. It seems like the real world is taken over by the digital one. This is kind of radical, but social media does affect our actual social life. I'll give you a few examples why I'm writing this blog.

A few days ago I was visiting a friend who works in a bar. Next to me there was this guy trying to hit on a woman (apparantly very, very drunk) and he asked her: "Could I have your Pin?" She was confused because she had no idea what he meant by Pin, the free messaging application of Blackberry. Obviously not a Blackberry-owner. What I'm trying to say here; what happend to exchanging phonenumbers?? Is the woman now considered old-fashioned?
I have a theory. Calling someone is maybe too personal and confronting than texting, thus scary for the 'new era generation'. I'm guessing the guy in question only has a real relationship with his Blackberry.

Twitter. What happend to privacy? Who wants to know that you are wiping your whatever in the bathroom at 2 pm? I know it is your own responsibility what the content is of your posts on Twitter, but sometimes.. wow please keep it to yourself. I know T-mobile says: 'Life is for sharing' but don't take this too literally..

Lets take a bite of the Apple. Another privacy thing is an application of the Iphone. There is this couple I know and they live together. He has an Iphone and downloaded an application where he can put ip-adressess from computers in. With this application he sees everything you're doing on your laptop, and is also able to edit it. Kind of freaks me out, bye bye privacy part two.

Social gatherings. By this I mean, actual social contact, the face to face-kind, not the "Ooh I've got 500 friends on Facebook, I'm sooo popular"-kind. Nowadays, when you go out (after you contacted your friend five times on Facebook) for a cup of coffee, lunch, dinner or whatever, the first thing you do is putting your telephone on the table. The second one is taking off your coat. Strange.
When you look to the other tables in, for example, a restaurant, 85% consists of tablesettings including telephones. And while your lunchpartner is going to the bathroom, you grab your other partner to go online. There seems to be this huge urge to let the whole world know: "HAVING LUNCH WITH ... @ ..." Seriously, like.. who cares?



I am seriously concearned about the next generation and schoolteachers. All those kids in your class texting, surfing the internet and being "social". At least I am glad that the smartphone hype wasn't yet there when I was in highschool. I probably wouldn't have paid any attention to a class whatsoever.

There are a lot of cons for social media and smartphones, but also a lot of pro's and so I have to admit:

It's darned handy!