And since you brought up procrastination: sure, the ultimate reason for procrastination (laziness) is the common theme here, but I feel proximate factors in contributing to procrastination (social media, tv, etc) are important to address…for example, video gaming is only a form of procrastination that appeals to a select group of the population, whereas facebook appeals to a much larger audience. It’s important to understand ‘why’ and not just focus on “How is procrastinating with [this] any different than procrastinating with [that]“…and I agree, procrastination is a poor habit to get into regardless of the source of said behaviour.

Well in anycase, the point I am making in this response isn’t about procrastination, nor was that the point of your article (afterall, I am communicating to you through a social medium so there is a lot of good!). It’s more interesting to look at how social media is changing the way we communicate and the way information is being disseminated, in which I am glad you have analyzed in your entry. And on that note, may I present you with:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8 (like all youtube videos, take it with grain of salt, not sure if the stats are valid!)

I see your point, maybe I should clarify mine a bit. The thing is that, although it is nice to say that if we only diverted those five minutes spent on twitter to exercise, we would be healthier, this would simply never hapn. The reason we don’t exercise, the reason we pend too much time at our computers is not the internet but the fact that we just tend to be lazy (which is not a good reason, but that’s another matter). Think back to high school… I remember so many of my friends procrastinating by playing video games or watching TV, or even just spending hours on the phone. How is this any better than social media? Of course we should make our lifestyles less sedentary, but I don’t think that attacking social media is going to accomplish that. If we want to do this, we need to readjust our attitudes to life and time in general; if we do that, then we would, I think, also adjust how much time we spend on social media.

(*we know the average person spends more than 5 minutes per day in a given social media platform).

Yes, people can of course, use other means to procrastinate without facebook or twitter, but let’s not jump to conclusions on hypothetical situations just to make ourselves feel better.

I think social media does take our time away from other aspects of our lives such as studying, I remember stumbling upon a “Because of Facebook, I’m failing out of college” facebook group–this type of attitude scares me, it’s like people are proud of the fact!

Inactivity and a sedentary lifestyle can increase risks of disease–surely you have heard of this before. If social media can somehow promote and disseminate facts on the importance of an active lifestyle effectively, then I will re-consider my views on S.M. But then again, how can you even track the results?

Nonetheless Julia, I appreciate this article and it’s an interesting POV.