Get a life

"Let's talk about Facebook, the popular social network right now". That was the theme of our last scout meeting. We (my staff and I) asked the kids, whose ages go from 13 to 16 years old, what did they think about Facebook, and which aspects they thought were life-changing about the emergence of this kind of social network. 
Truth is that these generations were practically born with Facebook acounts already created. It is funny thought, considering that at the beginning the goal of pages like this were totally different. Some people say that Facebook was created for men to find women in sexual terms, others believe that it is a platform ment to establish job connections. Anyhow, we all know that today it has turned upside down people relationships as we know them. Maybe this phrase sounds a bit rash, but it is more accurate than you might think. 
10 years ago there were fewer ways to communicate, nevertheless we used to manage quite well, ain't that right? So where does this need of sharing personal stuff come from? I believe that before Facebook, Messenger, Twitter and many others, people used to talk much more. Meaning actually talking, using there mouths in order to do it, not their fingers. 
One of the effects that I find really adverse about facebook is that, nowadays, people don't visit each other, they call each other significantly less, and why? Because in half the time you take to go visit one friend, you can write some nice words in the wall of all your friends, relatives, even people you don't really know!  And what is going on with the birthdays?! This year I decided to close my wall for that day, because it felt really weird that lots of people shared their regards and feelings towards me there. First because half of them are not really that close, and second because everybody else was going to see it, that just didn't feel right. 
Anyway, it is a fact that this kind of networks have lots of advantages in many many ways, but I believe that we have to be very careful with them. Not only because of what they always say, that some psyco might reach up to you and that kind of risk that this pages can bring on, but mainly because we are forgetting how to interact with real people. This is something that is actually happening, not just a potential risk, and it's consequences are global and permanent! 
So let's go back to our roots, let's have more human relationships, rather than virtual ones. In fact I am leaving my computer right now in order to do so, maybe you should try it too.