How Social Media Is Ruining Your Life, And How To Fix It

&#62; At the risk of sounding like an old-fogey, when you [ignore people in favor of your mobile], you are telling the other person that they are not interesting enough to hold your attention[...]<p>Good. We are telling them this because this is the truth. Some people are boring. It's time that society learned this, stopped encouraging us to be patronizing of such people, and instead started encouraging <i>them</i> to <i>be more interesting</i>.

I can see why this kind of article will annoy people, but I think there are some fair points. In particular, it is quite obvious to me that certain (by no means <i>all</i>) users are really over-immersed in social media, to the point where it is reasonable to start talk about addictive behaviours. I don't necessarily buy the neurological fears, but when you have people literally consumed by activities that are not truly productive, it is not unreasonable to ask them to see if they can take the odd day off.<p>It's like the difference between a drinker and an alcoholic; the drinker can take a week off the booze and still be fine.<p>As the Greeks used to say: pan metron ariston: In all things, moderation is best.

If social media is making you gullible, then why would you believe this? If you think a couple of tricks and some neat Web 2.0 tools are going to save you from becoming a social media outcast, then you are probably already a social media outcast. It drives me crazy all these people making totally unsubstantiated claims about how the internet makes people stupid. I suppose because we grew up with TV we're stupider than our parents. Does anyone really believe that?<p>Since citing some popular books and Times articles apparently means I've got a point, I'd like to refer you to this fascinating article by... a real doctor:<p><a href="http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2009/05/on_the_information_a.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2009/05/on_the_information_a.h...</a>

I have to agree with most of the facts. For nothing but the fact that "I too am starting to suffering from those."

Quote: "If you’re over, say, thirtyish, you grew up in a world where a good chunk of what you read was true."<p>What kind of moron writes this crap?