As I was procrastinating this semester’s already heavy work load, I stumbled onto President Obama’s tweet welcoming the first lady, Michelle Obama, to the Twitterverse .
I subsequently followed our first lady, only to find nearly 20,000 tweeters already following her within the first two hours of her first tweet. Her newly established account, already bursting at the seams with interested followers, made me think of just how connected our world is through technology.
I am currently taking a class in History and Technology, and the major theme is how technology has impacted globalization. After my Twitter epiphany, I realized how accurate this statement is.
You can connect to anyone in the world in less than a millisecond. Social media sites, like Twitter and Facebook, are perfect examples of this. Everyone understands how we can connect to each other in a blink of an eye through Facebook.
Because of this, our generation will be able to harness this technology and utilize it in our professional lives.
By understanding these online tools, we will have the ability to connect to people within our future careers and create, publish and share ideas and products with them. This will bind us to people from different cultures and landscapes and create a better sense of community, both socially and professionally.
Due to this option, our generation must recognize where our responsibilities with this technology lay.
Currently, you can get on Facebook and find some girl spread eagle in less than a foot of clothing, or a guy flipping off the camera with a beer in one hand and a joint in the other. This type of behavior not only damages the user’s credibility, but also affects how others view this technology.
This scandalous usage of social media is the reason older generations find this technology useless and troublesome. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth.
This technology can demonstrate our ability to connect to our fellow human beings on a global level, but we must use it as such.
We must encourage usage in a positive manner: reconnecting to old friends, linking up with a business associate, or even meeting with a customer from across the world. If we can not only demonstrate how our generation can utilize this technology, but also show the extensive impact it has, we could change society.
The great minds of Generation X have often predicted the amazing things our generation will produce. By allowing this technology to work for us, rather than the other way around, we can prove their predictions right. However, we have to do this by removing the stigma behind social media.
People who are not a part of the “Internet generation” see this new technology as scandalous and provocative. This is only because we present ourselves on it in such a way. By removing this aspect from our private accounts, we can remove the perception, as a whole, from the entire technology.
Once this negative outlook is removed from these technologies available to our generation, we can demonstrate how effective they are to our career and social lives.
Personally, I can reconnect with old friends, follow a Twitter page of a very popular educator and get online tips and ideas for the management of my classroom.
This thought doesn’t only apply to teachers, but any profession. In any job one can share and receive ideas from colleagues, or connect to a potential client. Future employers will surely check your Facebook, and potential clients will definitely look you up on Google.
By bringing common sense into social media, our generation can demonstrate its vast ability and even display our potential for the future.
