Back when I was in high school, we had ICQ, AIM and MSN Instant Messenger. We had emails and live journals. We chatted with friends, wrote about the trials of our young adulthood and that was the end of the story.

Now in the age of social media expansion, all of that has changed. I think it’s fair to say that teens growing up in this day and age are going to find themselves in social situations where they’re going to feel awkward, seek out their tablets, smart phones or lap tops and use those to communicate instead of having a verbal conversation. Because they just don’t know how. Why? Because they will never be put in situations where they need to verbally express anything. We are officially too reliant on technology. And it has come about to this is a pretty rapid way because things were not like this when I was growing up, and I’m only 30.

But that’s only one of the problems technology and social media is creating.

The problem with social media is that it encourages the sense of entitlement. Society feels as though they are entitled to know what every person is doing, and not only that, but they want to have say in it and some degree of control.

What has happened to society? We hunger on the drivel media outlets provide us, clamoring for more, more, more. And what does it get us? In reality, nothing. Are we ever satisfied with what we get? No. Because we have been taught to always want more. And we will.

Not just that, but society has come to base their worth on it as well. Someone’s deleted or unfollowed you? You must be a horrible person, a loser. You were deleted as someone’s friend on Facebook? They hate you and never want to talk to you again. Didn’t get enough likes or retweets? The cycle goes on in a vicious circle.

In a world where we once never had to censor every little thing we do, we have to now. We have to watch everything we say, our opinions can cause more uproar in this day and age than ever before. You can get sued for that post on Facebook that had absolutely nothing directly to do with the person who is using you. They didn’t like the post, they took offense to it, and now you’re screwed. It doesn’t matter than they’re the only ones that took that post that way.

Reading words doesn’t convey the same context of emotions that actually saying them does. Someone can read something that is meant as loving and caring and take it as something that is hate filled. Or something that is meant to be bad, as good. We’ve all done it, just as time goes on, more and more people do it.

You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

I have my own issues with social media, which is why I rarely post to Facebook, and when I do, it’s photos of my dog. On twitter, it’s often inspirational quotes or tweets about the gym, or food, or books. I have people who find this ‘annoying’. They don’t care about my dog, or that I broke yet another PR at the gym, they want me to open that private door and let them in. Like I’m supposed to use these outlets as an open, public diary. To me, that’s not how it works. You want to know me, what’s going on in my life, and what I’m doing? Let’s meet up for lunch, take a walk, get together and just chill. I come from the age where that’s how you got to know people, that’s how relationships were formed and that’s how you stayed up to date with your friends and what was going on in their lives.

I know all of you don’t really want to know how many times I go to the bathroom a day. Or what I ate for dinner. You don’t want to read sad posts about how my day was. Or the 1000000 selfies I could post. Over sharing is a side effect of social media, and not a rare one.

It’s all about the gym, food and my dog.

Well, not really, but in the land of social media it is. It is far safer that way.