blah blah blah morality

Recent studies show that online networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter could potentially render a person's moral compass virtually (no pun intended) untrustworthy. The studies attempted to measure a person's reaction to tragedy or otherwise noteworthy event and the speed at which people are updating their personal lives one the web appears to leave very little time for a sincere reaction. These results are not at all shocking and simply prove that bombardment by so many diluted stories or "newsfeeds" can certainly result in one cold-hearted individual that is so desensitized to the world, even when they log off his/her computer...this sounds eerily similar to the effects of too much violence on teens.

I personally don't Twitter, but have followed friends' pages and happened upon what are sometimes life altering events diluted into a mere sentence. The simplicity of this writing intrigues me, but the rate at which I am expected to digest these daily episodes appalls me at the same time.

Dilute -- to water down
Distill -- to capture the essence of

And unfortunately, Twitter and Facebook DILUTE not DISTILL the essence of what is going on in people's lives; no wonder our reactions are sometimes a simple "meh" where concern, compassion or advice really should be doled out.

Tweet: "Entertaining an unexpected house guest. We were madly in love once."
...a tumultuous relationship with all its ups and downs diluted into one "meh-inducing" sentence?

Tweet: "Still unemployed and lazy. Planning on drinking through this recession."
...a borderline alcoholic making light of the effects of this economic downturn?

Perhaps life is too serious and we do need an outlet to twitter away the time and book off into the late hours of the night, chattering away. Yet our society seems to be failing at giving people an outlet without seriously harming their morality.

Whatever. I'm not logging off and I enjoy dwindling away time on FB...it's more the youth of this generation that I wish to show a bit of concern for. Facebook users are less productive, perform significantly worse in school and are apparently on the route to amorality. And at the risk of sounding like an annoying parent or way ahead of my years, "Perhaps there should be an age limit on these things, enforced by one of the moral guardians that I know exist despite what the papers say!" WOULD SOMEBODY THINK ABOUT THE CHILDREN? j/k

Hopefully nobody will seriously mind my reproductions of their tweets and I somehow doubt that they will happen upon this post at all. But hey, if you don't want your thoughts to be consumed as quickly and sloppily as somebody else can spit them out, then don't post them in the first place.