While today’s Daily Mail article suggesting that Facebook (and its ilk) could be bad for your health (“raise your risk of cancer” as the sensationalist tabloid likes to put it) has already been mocked and parodied, I still think there’s an underlying lesson to be learnt.
For all the wonderful levels of communication that blogging, microblogging and social networking brings, there’s still a lot to be said for face-to-face, person-to-person engagement.
Of course, services like Twitter and feed aggregators help me to stay in touch on both a personal and professional level with a great many people that I might never, or infrequently, see in person due to geography. However, there’s a lot to be said for initiatives like the Weblogger Meetup Group for those of us who spend a great deal of time attached to a computer to get outside and interact.
There are many things that can be done at a real meeting that just don’t translate via online social networks. Drinking beer, for one.
For all the advances in technology, there’s nothing to beat sharing and brainstorming ideas and just getting to know people when you’re in the same room as them.
Of course it doesn’t just have to be other bloggers that we choose to meet in this way. Just as there’s more to finding and researching ideas for blog posts than Google, there’s a lot of inspiration to be found by getting back to the “real world”, at least once in a while.
What strategies do you use to connect with people away from the Internet?
2 thoughts on “Fresh perspective from meeting in the flesh”
It’s been parodied and laughed at because it’s a joke.
The research doesn’t really who anything other than generally home bound might have lower immune systems.
It does not prove that facebook users are less likely to go out. As a matter of discussion, facebook users tend to be more open socially and therefore more likely to meet face-to-face.
The old man doing the “research” should’ve just said, “I’m old and things are different and I don’t like different. So I’m going to rationalize how this difference will harm people.”
It’s a crock
You’re right. I should spend less time on my computer after school. 😛
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