I Just Don’t Get It….

This week in my communication lecture we were told a story that really stuck a chord with me, it was about a user of Twitter who sent out a series of tweets stating that he was going to end his life. A modern-day suicide note.

Before he tweeted this he tweeted he felt that he didn’t have anyone to turn to which to me I found really upsetting. He was a well-known person with many connections, but still he felt alone. It made me appreciate the fact I have a select few people I can turn to in times where I feel I need someone to talk to, but also made me question many things, such as how many other people are out there feeling the same way as he did? And how many people use social media as a way of gaining that support?

I understand that sometimes people find it hard to talk…my little sister is one of them, and forever I am telling her that a problem shared is a problem halved. But different people use different strategies and hers is also through the use of Twitter, to express her emotions and vent.

I did some further reading and found that “Britain is the loneliest capital in Europe” (The Independent, 2014: Online) . This shocked me at first but when I began to think about it, I began to think about the bigger picture and how things like the mobile phone, have become big parts of our daily lives. I read in the Daily Mail (2013: Online) that the average persons checks their mobile phone around 110 times a day. That to me is astonishing! Why? What is the need? Why do we feel so close to our phones? What are we waiting for?

Nowadays you look around we are surrounded by people buried with their head down engrossed in their mobile phones. We are a generation where people spend more time on-line building ‘relationships’ through cyberspace, than actually being bothered to make the effort and find out about who lives next door. Studying social care I think that this is scary.

The Independent (2013: Online) found the following statistics –

34 million hours are spent on Facebook each day, with a further 28 million hours on Twitter.

And almost a third (30%) of the UK’s 33 million Facebook users are on the network for at least an hour a day, with 13% spending at least two hours on Facebook each day.

More than a quarter (26%) of UK women on Facebook check their pages at least 10 times a day, compared to less than one in five (18%) of men.

Of the UK’s estimated 26 million Twitter users, almost a third (31%) spend more than an hour a day on the network, while 14% – more than 3.6 million people – say their daily usage exceeds two hours.

Personally I think that if we invested more time in our real life friendships and relationships, rather than wasting our time on-line with superficial fake friends and acquaintances, then maybe the levels of loneliness won’t be so high.

Have you ever watched Jeremy Kyle, now forgive me for using it as an example, but  how many times do you watch an episode of this and find that Facebook has been the main cause of the argument and relationship breakdown? Yet, so many still waste time on it.

Don’t get me wrong, I do believe that some forms of social media can be helpful, such as the case I mentioned at the beginning. But 9 times out of 10, I would put down the way our generation is so unconnected down to digital technologies and social media.

The video below is an advert illustrating how mobile phones are ruining relationships….

I mean, I can’t say that I haven’t been guilty for overusing my phone but I just think that we need to do something about this, and change the way we are behaving before we end up so engrossed in cyber culture we lose grip of the real world. We seem to be the cause of our own isolation and at this rate we will be the cause of our own extinction if this sort of behaviour carries on……haha.

So next time you pick up your mobile phone THINK!

I am well aware that I have used this post to mainly nag about the use of mobile phones but it wasn’t originally tended for that, but sometimes you just have to roll with the flow and let it out!

References

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2449632/How-check-phone-The-average-person-does-110-times-DAY-6-seconds-evening.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/britons-spend-62m-hours-a-day-on-social-media–thats-an-average-one-hour-for-every-adult-and-child-8567437.html 

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/forgot-phone-goes-viral-eight-2224887

Online Activism At It’s Best

So, I was just sat scrolling down my Facebook, procrastinating when really I should be focusing on my fast approaching deadlines, when a something caught my eye and made me think.

It was an e-petition for the ‘Green Party to be included in the BBC political debate’. So after kind of being won around by the Greens lately, mainly due to the fact they see the importance of investing in young people, youth services and communities, I thought yes I am defo going to sign then.

The great thing is, nowadays you can actually now have an impact without even having to leave your sofa. With an option of sharing the petition yourself through the use of other social media platforms, i.e. Facebook and Twitter, you are doing more than just signing the petition but adding to the spread of it. As mentioned in a previous post the author Clay Shirky, mentioned that through doing this, I will have added to the complexity, through creating more connections and more networks, that will hopefully spread the word further.

An article written by the Guardian, states,

….the BBC “will continue to keep any new evidence of increased support for the Green party under close review” – Guardian:Online:2014

I’m just hoping that the BBC are taking notice of this activity and are aware of the online support that the Green Party are receiving, currently 13,560 people have signed this out of the 15,000 signatures they are asking for, we can do this!

This led me to question, I wonder how effective these online petitions actually are, and if any had actually made any impacts…

An article by The Independent (2012) which stated that signing e-petitions has become one of Britain’s favorite forms of political participation. The author then goes on to discuss why he thinks internet petitions especially of this form have become so popular,

It is that internet-driven norms of networking, flexibility, spontaneity and ad hoc organizing have started to diffuse into our political culture and these norms are generating new expectations about what counts as effective and worthwhile political action. These new online norms also increasingly mesh with changing practices in the world of older media, particularly television.

And I completely see his point, but also I think that not just in terms of political e-petitions but just online petitions in general, over the past few years nearly everyone has access to the internet, and most people will access the web daily; that coupled with the ease of accessing these petitions, and sharing them so easily will both have added to the increase, because lets face it, the internet isn’t really making it effort for us to do this.

But after further researching, I found that for a e-petition to be considered for debate by the Commons, it has to reach 100,000 signatures and petitions that reach 10,000 signatures would elicit a written response from the government (BBC: Online: 2013). They also go on to state that not many petitions actually reach the 100,000 signatures needed with many becoming, what they describe as, ‘digital dust’.

I was shocked when I read this because to me this isn’t as many signatures that I thought, and to me, 100,000 is doable, especially when the cause is something that affect us all, such as political petitions. Millions of people access the web daily, so I wonder what is preventing them from reaching these targets? Maybe they need to promote themselves in other ways?

Although some may not be reaching there targets, digital petitions are on the rise. This shows me that there has been a cultural change within society, maybe even an evolution….the shift in things being done manually to digital, e.g. people going to a town hall to sign a petition vs e-petitions.

I wonder what effect this is going to have, if any? I wonder if it’s representative of the population as a whole’s views, or, if it is the views of the young, tech, savvy generation that regularly use the internet and are aware of these online petitions?

Who knows? I’ve sat and rambled on for long enough now, so I’m gonna wrap this up now with some references and then go and enjoy a large glass of wine…if it Saturday night after all!!!

BBC, 2013. First Day ‘is Crucial For The Success of E-petitions. [Online] Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23441223

The Guardian, 2014. BBC Refuses To Include Green Party Televised Leader Debates. [Online] Available at:   http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/oct/29/bbc-refuses-include-green-party-televised-leader-debates-general-election

The Independent, 2012. How Digital Petitions Are Replacing Traditional Parties As The Engine Of Modern, Popular Democracy. [Online] Available at: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/how-digital-petitions-are-replacing-traditional-parties-as-the-engine-of-modern-popular-democracy-8329266.html