1- Facebook

I blame Facebook for all of this.
It was the show opener for social media back in the day.
I can vividly remember sitting in my college statistics class in the spring of 2007 when I had my first experience with Facebook.
A know-it-all 18-year-old boy who sat next to me was using the school computer for other things instead of actual statistics because he was done with his test on this particular day.
Why he was wasting his time with us at the College of Lake County when he should be at Harvard, I’ll never know.
Sitting there on the school computer trying to check out his sexy friend who was “blocking” him and he couldn’t understand why.
He was whispering loudly at the computer screen about things like “RIGHT LIKE THAT WILL STOP ME” and “I WILL SHOW HER”.
He shared pictures of himself looking completely different than the annoying boy I sat next to two days a week for 16 weeks.
Instead of having a hooded sweatshirt, dirty fingernails, and Funyuns breath, the man he created on the computer screen in front of me was, shall I say, hot?
Muscular, tan and had really good hair.
Not stuck under a ball cap and smelling like bed.
Welcome to the world of showing everyone who you aren’t.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Facebook for many things: sharing pictures of my kids to family and friends who live far away; meme’s that are funny; advice from sites on things like ADHD, parenting, life, writing, blogging, etc.
But there are things I don’t love Facebook for: pictures that make me feel like I am missing out, meme’s that aren’t funny, advice from sites on things like ADHD, parenting, life, writing, blogging, etc..
I love to be connected to people but sometimes I feel like it is all too much and maybe we have gotten to the point where we feel like we need to say whatever, whenever at the cost of other’s feelings.
Yes, “butthurt” is a term that I hear all the frick frack time and some people do get “butthurt” too easily, but I feel like the people using that term are usually the ones doing most of the butt hurting.

Facebook is good in small doses.
But I am secretly hoping it goes away by the time my youngest is in middle school.

2- Twitter

Where I am ambivalent about Facebook, I am all on board with Twitter.
I adore Twitter.
Twitter is my social media spirit animal.
If social media were an animal.
I am not embarrassed to say that this is where I get my news, where I get most of my information about what is going on in the world, and where I read most of my blogs.
I feel as though I can really let my hair down on Twitter.
Whereas on Facebook I am a mom and wife, on Twitter, I am Kari the writer who says the word F#$% and shares my political agenda openly.
I share memes and re-tweet comical things and have so much darn fun there.
I said it before and I will say it again: Twitter is the nightclub version of social media.
You can pretty much say anything you want without being judged when you are on Twitter.
It is the social media version of getting drunk and slurring to your girlfriend about how you think your co-worker’s butt is really, really hawt.

Here is the problem I have with Twitter though: followers.
I get really tired of people following me for followers.
Not because they dig my content or that they think my blog is cool or even that they think I might share some cool crap or even the remote possibility that we could start a cool Twitter ska band.
Personally, that is why I follow people.
I know I am probably “doing it wrong” or maybe even being a bit naive but this is what is wrong with social media.
We have lost touch with being social.
It has become this race to get tons of “friends” then never interact with them, especially on Twitter.
Maybe it is the whole nightclub scene, which can be a bit noisy at times.
There is so much going on and it gets smoky and really loud which does make it very hard to have a decent conversation.

Be discerning.
Be social.
Get on the dance floor.

3- Pinterest

original photo courtesy of Brandi Lee