I’ve always been a news hound.
As a kid I was stuck to the TV at six o’clock, shushing my brothers. Most of it went over my head, but the sight of foreign places behind well dressed reporters entranced me. Kings and ministers sitting on plush chairs posing for handshake photos before shooing the photographers out was, for me, all for more intriguing because I had no clue what it all meant.
The internet gives me constant access to breaking stories and now as a quasi-sapient adult, undestanding the stories draws me in further.
I should add here that I am developing a healthy cynisism when listening to anything concerning large corporations and governments.
However, more and more I am dismayed by some news stories.
For example, this week a body was found in a local canal.
About a mile away a dog walker found a man in his late forties floating.
As of today he is still unidentified which saddens me.
No one noticed him missing. So detached was he from the family he must have once had, so devoid of friends, that no-one has come forward to say “my mate hasn’t answered his door for a few days” or “my brother has just gone”.
Some of this is down to how we migrate. More and more folk move away from their home town and for transitory relationships. They can disappear and start again. Or just disappear.
It may also be to the increase in what I see as “keyboard warriors”: individuals who spend a disproportionate time using the internet for social contact and for ego-boosting salvos on forums.
There is a worrying trend of people immersing themselves in social media to the detriment of contact with the real world. Authorities in Antwerp, Utah and Chongqing have all painted “texting lanes” to accommodate the new breed of head down, thumb clicking dead heads who detach themselves from reality, favouring virtual worlds over the here and now.
There was a lovely video doing the rounds a while back that showed a man looking for an addresss bumping into a girl who becomes his sweetheart, wife and companion over a long fulfilling life. It contrasts this to him playing with his phone and walking past her.
I think the problem lies not with the technology we use but in the choices we make.
Time spent following a news story is not a bad thing if it ends and is replaced with hearing Cerys read, or Jo go on about her mates, or joining Ashley to bounce up and down to some Bhangra. Fiddling about with Minecraft is okay but it stops when Gill and I have to coordinate hospital visits (three in the last 7 days) or just to chat with Heather.
Social media and the internet are a part of our lives, just as TV, hobbies, friends and family are. We make choices on how we interact with our world, both the real and virtual bits.
As the video says, Look Up.
(and yeah, smarty pants, I do get the irony of finding a video like this on the internet)
