Married to... Social Media?

So, I sat down to dinner with my husband the other night. Nowhere fancy, just a local seafood joint. And, after we ordered, he popped out his phone, i popped out mine, and a good 15 minutes of complete silence followed while we both played games, checked our FB, and tweeted. i looked up and realized that here we are "trying to spend some 'quality time' together" and we're not talking, not laughing, and not interacting in any way with each other (oh wait, that's not true, we did have a Words With Friends game going on). So, i put my phone away (and yes, it was hard to do) and waited. and stared at him. and waited some more... until he realized he was the only one still playing on his phone (insert Stephanie Tanner - HOW RUDE!)... he put his phone down and we were finally able to have a great time together... laughing, talking, telling each other about our days... things that newlyweds should be doing!

Thinking about that little scene at dinner reminds me that so many people are obsessed with their phones and social media, not just us... an episode of the kardashian's where kim and kourtney are at lunch and kim doesn't realize that kourtney has left her there because she's too focused on tweeting... i just don't want to ever feel like either me or G are married to social media instead of each other. the irony in all this is that G only got his first smart phone this past october right after we got married.... i created a monster!!! subsequently, he's told me the three things he loves in life (in order) were me, the Jets and his iPhone! (and yes, he did say it was a very close toss up between the first two. sheesh.)

Today I read Jess' blog post about feeling like she's married to social media, and how this affects her and her relationships. And I decided I would link up and do a post about this because in a world where technology is making leaps and bounds daily (the NEW iPad just hit 3 million in sales a record for them)... where "texting and driving" is a ticketable offense (and should be)... where people can go onto websites to cheat on their significant others (disgusting)... social media is not going away anytime soon. In fact, i heard a news story the other day about how employers want access to potential employees Facebook pages (is this going too far? is this an invasion of privacy?)

Personally, I started out in college with AIM, went on to MySpace, graduated to Facebook, and now have a Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and this lil ol blog... and while i think social media can be a great tool for business and staying in touch, i can see how there can be so many different dangers of all these different social outlets.

We spend less time with each other and more time with the machines that are supposed to be "connecting" us... and its sooooo addictive (some polls show that people check their facebook EVERY 15 MINUTES!)  I realized this week, that playing around on my phone sometimes occupies the majority of my night! I started reading this week and it was so nice to not be playing iPhone games (sorry Draw Something friends, blame the Hunger Games) and while i know i'll be back to playing in full force soon, i'm really making a conscious effort to not "be married" to social media and to devote some of my time to other things i love. i think its good to "take breaks" sometimes and try to be less dependent on technology.

What are your thoughts on social media? This is such an interesting topic and one that is only going to be more prominent as more advances are made in this world.