YOU(tube) TWIT(ter) FACE(book)!

originally written for Mohka Life Magazine (www.mohkalifemag.com)

It started with MySpace (remember Tom? Everybody first friend!) which, in 2005, had more daily page views than Google. Since then, social networking had become like oxygen to our generation. Today, we have Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Chatroulette, and thousands of other ways to get ourselves into the online world. According to The New York Times, “young Americans from the ages of 8 to 18 spend more than seven and a half hours a day on average using a smart phone, computer, television or other electronic device”. Seven and a half hours. Let's put that into perspective. Seven and a half hours; the equivalent of two finals at Emory, two and a half weeks of class-time, a flight to the UK, and, most important, half a season of Glee.

Even if only half of our internet use goes to social networking sites (highly unlikely), we're still spending about 4 hours a day Tweeting, posting, commenting our lives instead of actually living them. While I am the first to argue for internet use and the endless possibilities social networking gives us, even I think that's a bit extreme.

I'm not undervaluing social networking. I think Facebook is great, it lets us stay in touch with old friends and “reconnect with” anyone Mark Zuckerberg chooses worthy in our friends list. And Youtube gives us endless amounts of entertainment late on weekend nights. Sites like Text From Last Night and FML have become the bonding factor between people under 30. It's fun, it's like a little joke we play on all the adult in the world. The ability to connect with each other over the internet has defined our generation in a lasting way. Still, I worry about what exactly that definition is going to be ten years from now. Are we going to be known as the decade that created “Dramatic Look Gopher” and had 500 Facebook users as fans of “Don't you just hate it when people become fans of irrelevant things" (actually a fan page on Facebook)?

The first step to recovery is admitting there's a problem.

Hi, my name is Simran Khosla and I am an internet addict who is actively seeking recovery. Join me, won't you?