Day 3 Social Media is.......

Day 3 of no social media.....

But what exactly is social media?  Does it include blogs?  Emails?  Yahoo home page?

Social media generally refers to those sites that are more like a social setting where there is interaction amongst the participants.  Facebook would be the granddaddy of all SM sites and probably the biggest time waster in the history of the world.  Not only can one interact with people one had never actually met, one can also play worthless games and give fake, as well as real, gifts.

I never was a huge FB game player.  I did the garden thing for a while, and also that bar game.  But I was never a Mafia Wars or Farmville fan.  I keep receiving invites to play this new Candy Crush game (or something like that....I don't pay much attention to the names) and I see the notifications that so and so reached a new high score in some game.  Good grief, FB wastes enough of my time - I don't need some game to suck me in, too!!!

Yesterday, I cleaned out my pantry area.  It had needed it for a LONG time, and now I'm not embarrassed for someone to use the trash can in the side of it.  I also got my floor mopped, ran 3 miles, did two yoga classes, cooked dinner, and did laundry.  It's amazing what can be accomplished when I'm not searching Pinterest for some new Grumpy Cat meme.

(But I do miss Grumpy Cat.  She's my hero.)

I am not including blogs in my social media fast.  I'm not one who reads a lot of blogs anyway and those that I do follow I don't read every day.  Email is a necessity in this day and age, and because my job and my child's school communicate that way, I couldn't give that up.  And the Yahoo home page is usually where I get my news and check the weather, plus it's not really interactive.  My belief is that none of the above - blogs, email, and Yahoo - are social media and I will continue to use these during my month.

I did hear a guy on NPR about two weeks ago who gave the up the Internet for a year.  It was an interesting idea and his review of his year was fascinating; how his life was so very different having to rely on snail mail and the old research methods of reading books (gasp!).  But he did say that it wasn't realistic for most people to be able to go Internet free in this day and age.  Most people who have a job or are students could not go without the Internet, especially since most communication is accomplished via email.  My college kids receive grades and do homework on their school's sites, and they have so many papers to write that research would be too time consuming without Internet research.  (Some classes even require Internet research.)

Social media is as far as I will go for a fast, at least for now.  Giving up more may come later.....maybe I'll even go live by a pond for a year.