Cathy’s Blog

Now, I can’t claim to be one of these social networking buffs on every conceivable site but I do have a Twitter, YouTube and Facebook account. Facebook is the only one I use on a regular basis and it’s addictive!

I’ve found several old friends on there and had lots of laughs and fun catching up with people but I have to say, this last few days on FB have been eye openers!

My old school year held a reunion last weekend and I was unable to make it, due to being busy getting married. However, one of my friends did go and took loads of photos that he then uploaded onto Facebook. I scoured the photos for people that I remembered and pretty much drew a blank! Who were all these middle aged people? And more to the point, would they think the same if they saw me?!

After some time studying the pictures and some other people being able to name a few, things became clearer and I was able to identify more and more but I do know for sure that had I walked past any of them in the street I wouldn’t have batted an eyelid! Now this to me is scary!  No doubt I am one of those middle aged people that blend in with all the others but my heads still telling me I’m 20 and with it!

On a lighter note, it has taken jsut a few days to catch up with people that I hadn’t seen for over 20 years and I’m loving it. We all grew up, moved on, got married and had families of our own. Changing surnames meant that, even with the invention of social networks, these people were hard to track down but all of a sudden it takes one note or one pic from a member and it spreads like wildfire throughout the online community and once again, we’re all talking like the last two decades haven’t happened.

I am very aware that there is a potential to use these networks for bullying and indeed this does happen but there will always be an element of society that finds a way to vent their own insecurities on others. On the whole, I have to say that I think the whole social networking online is a fantastic idea.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 18th, 2009 at 4:03 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.