Caught you with your hand in the mailbox

By Sarah Miller

I have been checking my mail everyday for a week and still nothing!  My cousin from Ohio said she was sending me a letter in the mail, I spoke with her on the telephone yesterday and she said she sent it two weeks ago. Seriously?  Um...No!

I am 25 years old and when I need to get in contact with my family from Ohio it's not over the phone and it is certainly not through snail mail.  Why would anyone these days be sending a postage mailed letter to keep in touch when we have the super speed highway of information at our hands through social media sites?  The reality is that most Americans are using social media to stay in touch with friends, relatives, co-workers and acquaintances (even people they don't know).  I conducted a survey on 11 random friends of mine and my findings show that people from my parents age (in their 60s, but you didn't hear that from me) to teenagers are using SM (Social Media).

Of the people I surveyed all of them enjoy that SM allows us to connect with each other so easily.  However, A few people felt that was also a negative to using SM.  Privacy is a concern for SM users.  One person who was surveyed specifically was concerned with teens using it to post inappropriate pictures and expressed concern for their safety, he is an educator.  Another person was a mother who only started using Facebook in order to keep track of her teenage sons use of Facebook.  She later found Facebook a valuable instrument for catching up with her own friends and family.  Of the 11 people I surveyed, all appreciate that they are able to keep in contact with people that they would otherwise lose connections to.  One person explained how he was able to reconnect with an ex-fiance and mend some open wounds.  That same person also started a relationship on MySpace, by the end of the relationship he felt a need to cancel his MySpace account in order to sever the those same ties he had created with her. 

Many of my findings uncovered different results.  However, some of the similar findings are that all of them had used SM, some more than others and longer than others.  All of them check their SM at least once a day with the exception of one who canceled all of her SM sites for short time span.  They all multi-task while using SM.  Majority of those surveyed use SM while at work, but not necessarily for work purposes, and access their SM sites from their cell phones if possible.  

One of my interviewees expressed that he fears we are losing  the art of writing letters while another fears we are losing our ability to use correct grammar and English while writing. So, to that I say, if my blog is riddled with grammatical errors, I blame my use of social media.