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Embracing the Internet brings us closer together

Some of you may have noticed that my column is online only this week. Thanks to a crazy week at work, I wasn’t able to meet my print deadline. It’s not a choice I like to make often, but it got me thinking. The online world is definitely our future.

Think about it. You’ve probably heard about newspapers going online only and killing their print edition. No, The Daily Times is not headed down that path anytime soon, but the Internet offers so many options for society.

One of the biggest new trends is social networking. It seems like everyone has a Facebook, MySpace or Twitter account these days. Yes, you still have folks who are very anti-social, anti-Internet -- but it’s time to jump on the bandwagon.

My mother recently joined Facebook. She’s still getting acquainted with the site, but she’s picked it up fast. I’m one of those horrible daughters who doesn’t talk to my mother every day. I’m really bad at keeping in touch with people, maybe even lazy, honestly.

Mom and I e-mail but, even with that, I can be bad at replying. It might take me a couple of days to reply, a personality trait she hates. But thanks to the marvels of Facebook and its chat program, my mom can say hello anytime I’m online. I’ll be browsing friends’ pages or playing on one of the addictive applications, and Mom will pop up with a “Hey, how are you doing?”

I love the fact that I can keep up with Mom easier, and vice versa. Yes, I need to be better with the phone calls and e-mails, but thanks to social networking, I can keep up with my family better.

And it doesn’t just stop at talking to my mom. I’m able to keep up with plenty of people that I wouldn’t normally be able to see, including friends I haven’t seen in years. My 10-year high school reunion is coming up this year, and I’m helping coordinate it through Facebook. I was senior class president, and it fell on the class officers to one day organize the reunion. I’m two-and-a-half hours from my hometown, and so it’s really hard for me to get things rolling. But via social networking, I can talk with people and keep up with it all.

Or think about the uses of Twitter. While the University of Tennessee was trying to replace Lane “The Traitorous Jerk” Kiffin, I was following the news online and via Twitter accounts. I was able to catch the misleading portions of the search as well as the moment when Derek Dooley was crowned the new king of UT.

Social networking can also bring a community together. Many of you might know of the wreck involving Maryville High School student Ashley Reisser and others. A Facebook group was created, inviting members of the community to pray for this critically injured young girl. As I write this, the group has almost 9,000 members. The Facebook group has allowed people from across the country and from other countries to send prayers and well-wishes.

I know it has to be a comfort to the families and friends of these high school students to know that so many people care about their well-being.

Sadly enough, I can’t imagine my life without the Internet. As I said, I don’t keep up with people well, but through social networking, I can find out everything I ever wanted to know about the goings-on of friends (and sometimes even more than I wanted to know). It’s an addiction and maybe I’m a little obsessed at times, but there’s no going back now.

Amanda Greever is assistant managing editor for print at The Daily Times. She writes a weekly column in Women’s Times. She can be reached at 981-1161 or amanda.greever@thedailytimes.com. Check out her blog, greever.blountblogs.com, or follow her on Twitter:www.twitter.com/agreever_editor.