Chit Chat: Lost In Translation and FOMO

Have you ever got into a fight with a friend, a boyfriend or a family member by getting lost in translation? What I mean by this is a text message taken the wrong way? An email taken in the wrong context? A Facebook status 'aimed' at you or them? This is the era of the electronic message and the social networking frenzy.

How many times 10 years ago did you hear people say, 'Well she said on Facebook....'. Never. How many times did you hear, 'Well then they sent me a snobby email....'. Never. And how many time's did you get into a row through text messaging? That's correct, never.

Well things have changed. The internet is full of social networking websites, with Facebook having over 800,000,000 active users. Public rows on twitter are all the more common. Kids as young as 4 or 5 are getting mobile phones for there birthday and email is the new letter. I write to my Nana at least once or twice a week via email. It is the new 'correspondence'. And I have to be honest I really miss the excitement of a letter (a real letter, not a bill) dropping through my door. It's almost somewhat inconvenient. Two week's I applied for a job with a large well known company. I very nearly missed my interview as they sent me an email rather than a letter. I have now learned that nearly all companies now do this.

Anyway, my main subject of this post is the one of the drama caused by this new technology. In fact I was quite surprised that when doing some research for this post, when I typed 'Divorce caused...' the search engine's first option to finish my sentence was in fact 'Divorce caused by Facebook'! It is claimed that Facebook is now involved in a massive one third of divorces. You can read plenty of stories about this on a website created especially for the cause, http://facebookcheating.com/

With social networking taking over what seems like the world, then there is the new obsession with mobile phones. I have lost count of the amount of times I have had issues relating to mobile phones, text messaging, etc. The new 'Smart Phone' Era is a upon us and with it comes 'FOMO', (Fear of Missing Out). With access to Facebook, Twitter, SMS, What's App and goodness knows what else, people have there phones permanently glued to their hands. At work I was constantly telling people to put their phones away. And on more than one occasion people that had called in sick were caught out by updating there Facebook status. I have also had to deal with squabbles of 'Well they put on Facebook blah blah blah'. To be honest, its just a pain in the neck.

As for texting, well that can be one hell of a dangerous thing. I have to be honest, I am one of the millions of people under the SMS Spell. I find it so much easier to send a text than to make a phone call. But more often that not, a text can be miss read. An argument started just because something wasn't read right. Then there are the texts that get sent to the wrong person. Ever done that before? I'm sure you have. Oh and then there's that temptation to have a look at your partners phone, which by the way if you are having that thought, you are probably in the wrong relationship.

We all know it't true. We all know that it's gone beyond the healthy level. The will things ever be like they used to be now. No, of course not. We are all just going to have to learn to deal with the new social networking era, over come the need to look at our phones every few minutes.



Have you ever had a bad experience caused by electronic communications?
Comment below and let me know your thoughts. xxx