Computer Usage

I seem to have read a lot of magazine articles recently that are criticising everyone's day to day computer use. Are we spending too much time on Blogger, Facebook, Twitter etc?
They happily gave facts and figures, trying to convince us that this is bad for our health, our lives even our families!

However, times have changed.
I remember when I was growing up that people lived in the same town as they were born in and they never moved, well, apart from to a new house several streets away!
Your family and relatives all lived close by and you probably had lunch/dinner with them at least once a week. Grandma's house was the local meeting point every Sunday afternoon.
Your friends were people you caught up with at least twice a month, if not weekly and you always knew what other people were up to because you would always pass someone in the street who would know you both and happily pass on the latest gossip/news.
If you did ever move away from this town, it was usually for work training etc and then you more often than not returned to your home town to raise your own family and so the cycle began again.

Times have changed.
I have had the lucky experience of living in 39 different houses in my life, and at least 12 or 13 different towns.
I have friends and family all over the world but I can't just drop by every Sunday afternoon to catch up or even meet in town to catch the latest movie.
I am still friends with people I knew when I was 17, ok so we are not the closest of friends, we do not know each others daily lives, but we know enough about each others families etc to be able to have a decent conversation when we do meet, even if this is every 10 years!

So are these web sites useful to me, definitely.
I started using Blogger in 2006 because at one stage Grandma was overseas and it was ideal for her and Grandad to keep up to date with their growing grandchildren, even though they were only gone for 2 years, at least at the end of it they didn't feel like they had missed out on so much of their grandchild's lives.
I posted about what the boys were up to, the latest pictures of them and even things that affected our lives, the same as I would now when I pick up the phone to mum.
This has lead on to my Aunties and cousins in Great Britain also logging on and catching up with what the family is up to, how they are growing etc, so even though I do not keep my blogs (I have 2 of them, Life Today and Bac to Skool) up to date daily, there is enough information on there for everyone to keep up with the boys and what they are doing.

I also use Facebook, yes sometimes I do post that 'it is raining' and how this effects my day but mainly I use it to keep up with my friends that do not live within easy reach of me, people that I now know more about than if it was left to hand written letters!
Now I love receiving hand written letters, although I seem to have stopped sending them like everyone else in life. But I am an avid Birthday card sender and probably send more than my fair share of them every year.
We may not be able to go to the movies together but that doesn't stop us talking about the same movie when we have both seen it.

So can these sites get addictive?
Yes of course they can, I sometimes feel like I am having an affair with my computer.
But then there are other times when there is nothing to post about for a day or two, no pictures to upload and no one you need to catch up with.
Someone once mentioned that her blog was her personal journal, she no longer kept a handwritten diary every evening, she posted on her blog instead.
It was also her personal journal to her children and she was looking forward to the day when the children could look back on what she had posted about and remember their childhood.

Times have changed, the world is a bigger place now, although it seems smaller with our ability to travel round it so quickly. People no longer live down the street but that doesn't stop us wanting to keep in touch with friends and family.
So the computer is here to stay, it will always have a place in most homes and I don't think people are going to complain about that too much.