Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Social Media Addictions

It was just released this morning that an 18 year old, Terry Gene Starnes, from Hayden, Idaho, was arrested last week for stabbing his own mother. The cause for this stabbing? She would not let her son get on MySpace!

Terry's MySpace page headline reads: "School work sleep!!!!! that's it!!!!".. and MySpace, of course.

Social media addictions amongst young people, Generation Z, are continuing to become more and more apparent. Ask any 13 - 18 year old to live without Internet access or texting for a week and see what would happen. Chances are they would not be happy about it and would not be able to fulfill the challenge. It is somewhat disturbing to think that kids are growing up more and more online instead of being outside with their friends playing, interacting with one another, and enjoying real life.

So what are your thoughts on this story? Do you feel that social media has the potential to turn into a big social problem amongst young people? Would you be able to live a week without Internet access? Without Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter? Without SMS (texting)?

2 comments:

Jessica Mosley said...

I have to say that story scares the living daylights out of me. That is so sad that someone would be THAT addicted to online. In the video we watched about teenagers online the girl that only had her online persona was upset when it was taken away but she managed to keep going and have a certain degree of functionality in the real world. Personally I could live without all the things you listed and I have gone months without any of them before, but we are different generation from the people mentioned in your post.

nspooner1 said...

I spent my high school years having knock-down, drag-out fights with my brother over our home computer. He would spend 8-10 hours a day doing God knows what. Not even my parents could do much to stop him short of throwing the computer out the window.

Since he started highschool and getting involved in sports, he is alot better at managing his time like a normal human being. But I digress. The point is, this stuff is very real and very scary and not something to be written off as funny. Once weapons get involved, it's time to act. I'll get off my soap box now.