Social media, bringing your acquaintances together and your family further apart

Ever since I started using the social media sites I enjoyed the benefits of communicating with family and friends who lived in different parts of the world. I thought that it was great and that being connected with everyone would allow me to be in touch 24/7.With more than 750 million active users on facebook and an estimate of 200 million users on twitter is hard not to be obsess on checking what’s going on with those who are part of our network.  Today I have the applications to all the social media sites downloaded into all my portable devices so I don’t get ‘disconnected’.

When thinking on how social network connect us to those far, I realized how disconnected I have become from those who are near.  As an example I have notice a trend that every social media user is following (at least in my network). In the past, when it was someone that I had a close relationship with birthday, I would make the impossible to call the person. Today we believe that if we send a message via facebook, twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, Google + among many other social sites we are exempt and have done good. What we don’t realize is that even though we are now connected to people we have lost touch with, the ones that are closer to us are moving further part.

In the future it’s important to keep the balance between social media and personal relations. Not everything has to go through social media. In order to keep everything in equilibrium make time for both relations the ones in your social networks and the one who are more personal.