You could feasibly spend every living, waking moment writing on Facebook walls, networking on Ning, and/or endlessly twittering on Twitter about something, or just as likely, about absolutely nothing. You could be living a purely digital lifestyle. That sounds a little scary to me … living a digital lifestyle.
Can this possibly be healthy? There is huge value in social networking, the sites listed above are great … not the issue here …but how much time (spent online) is too much time? Traveling around this winter, it was amazing to witness the mass amounts of people in public places …heads down, staring into some sort of mobile communication device. Kids texting at restaurant tables, businessmen and women frantically thumbing away at their blackberries, and laptops in use (myself included) just about everywhere and anywhere. When does anyone ever come up for air?
This is something I think about quite a bit working all day on the computer. Is it my age (I am not a millennial) or the lifestyle that I have chosen that makes it all seem so strange? Probably a little bit of both. Advanced technologies have created additional opportunities for non-tourist related businesses to grow and have allowed for many more ways to stay connected here in the mountains. There is no discounting the value in that, but I would also like to believe that we are still choosing to live here for a mountain lifestyle (that is as opposed to a digital lifestyle).
When it comes down to it, though, isn’t it more about finding your own true balance in whatever you choose to do? Social networking is entertaining at times, a good way to connect with long lost friends and a great business networking tool (even though sites like Linked in categorize Jackson Hole as Pocatello (???)), but personally speaking, I still feel the most creative and the most alive when I am doing something, anything … outside !
An excellent view on a subject I often think
about……….