The Buzz Bin

by Jenn Riggle

Photo by Jack Anthony

It seems wherever I turn, I’m being bombarded by social media and its constant stream of information. Like kudzu, the green menace that covers much of the southeastern United States, it threatens to take over my life.

My day is consumed with social media and social networking sites. Whether it’s getting up early to read the news, keeping up with the endless stream of tweets coming through my TweetDeck, finding something interesting to add to the online conversation on Twitter and Facebook, writing my weekly blog post or making sure my daughter is using the Internet to research the solar system rather than watching singing cats on YouTube.

If you don’t live in the southeastern United States, you may not be familiar with kudzu, a fast-growing vine that covers anything that comes in its path. My 11-year-old daughter loves the way the vines turn trees, telephone poles and abandoned homes into gigantic topiaries. Yet for all its apparent whimsy, kudzu costs nearly $500 million every year in lost cropland and control costs.

So too, social media can take over your life, providing you with so much information that you have little time for anything else – let alone your work. You read about people whose marriage vows are broken when they find a former flame on Facebook. And when I get up early, I’m always surprised by the number of insomniacs who are tweeting at all hours of the night and morning. Even John Mayer received some flack from his on-again and off-again girlfriend, Jennifer Aniston, for his incessant tweeting.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the immediacy that news and information is shared on Twitter and how social media has helped our clients reach out to their customers in new and meaningful ways. However, if you let it, social media will creep into your work, your life and your relationships. That’s why it’s so important to chop away at it and decide what adds value to your life.

Maybe you can’t follow everyone on Twitter. Or you only tweet during certain times of the day or only during the work week. Or maybe you focus your energies on using a couple of social networks well, rather than trying to be everywhere at once.

There will always be another message that needs to sent or another story breaking somewhere in the world, but my kids are only going to be young once. It’s important to make sure there’s time to catch Mike Ness and Social Distortion play a rockin’ set at the NorVa, watch my daughter swim a 200 IM at a swim meet, proof her research paper one more time or play yet another game of SORRY! (okay, I still need to work on this).

And maybe I’ll even tweet about it.