My Name is Holliberry, and I'm a Netaholic

I learned this weekend that I could be an internet addict. And so could you. Look at you, sitting there, surfing the web, reading blogs, checking your Myface. According to Time Magazine, the fact that I spend 6 hours on the internet most days (I am usually logged on while I'm at work, although I don't do work on the internet for the most part outside of sending emails and pulling the occasional bit of information off the web) is an indication that I should maybe go to a boot camp for a few months. They could be right. My intense anger and anti-social tendencies are most likely due to my attachment to my laptop. But it's shiney. And I like it.

In all seriousness, I am a wee bit concerned for today's youth. I talk to youth all the time who come straight from school or at least straight from their sport or club, and log on the internet (if they don't have it on their phone). They are on Myface, and they are blogging, and they have "good friends" they know solely online. Kids (and younger adults) are having fights, hooking up, and breaking up via text. I am all for technology. I sometimes stop myself from rolling my eyes (and other times don't stop myself) when people go on tangents about the evils of technology. It's amazing the things you can do nowadays. But that is a topic for later. My worry is that kids nowadays are learning to socialize and work out conflict with machines, instead of face to face. I really haven't read to much about the social skills and conflict management skills of our kids and how technology is impacting those things, but I do know that there is a whole new world of bullying and scandal being opened up by the ability to snap and send pictures at any time, post them on the internet, circulate them via email, blogs and myface, and get the chatter going via the same routes. Most kids I work with seem to have adapted to these issues, and think nothing of them, since this is all they have known. To me, it just adds to the feeling the world is going at a faster and faster pace. It makes me want to go live in a shack up in the mountain and raise goats. I wonder if I can get wifi up there....