Tag Archives: social lite

For almost fifteen years, I have worked in print and online. I love that I haven’t placed all my eggs in one basket, not just because freelance writing and Hollywood and life is unpredictable, but because, more importantly, it means that I don’t think one sort of egg is superior to another.

Having voiced my frustration more than once at the elitist ideas of “real writers” vs. “just bloggers,” I couldn’t stop thinking about Cathryn Sloane’s NextGen Journal article “Why Every Social Media Manager Should Be Under 25”. (Yes, I call it an article because I have a print media brain and think of narrative blog posts as essays and posts on social media sites as articles. And I probably always will. Just as I will probably always call movies films, even if celluloid is out of the equation. Call me sentimental or a lost cause. Tomato, tomahto.)

I’m not a social media manager, but this article and the follow up written after the post went viral puzzled me.

Age doesn’t determine ability. Experience does. That isn’t a question of ageism, which is a tag used in the follow-up article. (Fuel meet fire.) A 25 year old could possess more social media savvy than a 52 year old, but it ain’t necessarily so. In fact, research shows (from anecdotal to scientific to my own Heathers Lunchtime Polls) that digital natives aren’t quite living up to the hype. They use tech gadgets, they can barely live without them, and consider the instant gratification machine into which they were born the norm. But they aren’t inherently social media savvy. Or computer smart. Or technologically savvy.

As I write If Emily Posted and begin to shape the concept of a curriculum that teaches social media ethics to digital natives, I have learned firsthand how much there is to teach. They have the toys but lack the tools.

“A new study coming out of Northwestern University, discovered that college students have a decided lack of Web savvy, especially when it comes to search engines and the ability to determine the credibility of search results… The only thing that matters is that something is the top search result, not that it’s legit.” (So-Called “Digital Natives” Not Media Savvy, New Study Shows - ReadWriteWeb)

“In many cases, kids are media multitasking, packing an average of 8.5 hours’ worth of media into 6.5 hours a day… Legions of physicians and academics will be studying the implications of all this technology on children’s brains and thinking skills for years to come…” (How Mobile Technologies Are Shaping a New Generation - Harvard Business Review)

“Michael Wesch, who pioneered the use of new media in his cultural anthropology classes at Kansas State University, is also sceptical, saying that many of his incoming students have only a superficial familiarity with the digital tools that they use regularly… Only a small fraction of students may count as true digital natives, in other words. The rest are no better or worse at using technology than the rest of the population.” (The Net Generation Unplugged - The Economist)

We marvel at kids ease with an iPad and teens creating fabulous mashups on YouTube, but the same kids with the talent to make those YouTube videos are foolishly oversharing on Instagram and saying things they’ll later regret on Facebook.

Just because your social media footprint arrived alongside the one on your birth certificate doesn’t mean you’re more equipped to be a social media manager than someone in their forties or fifties, although it does mean you have more years to learn.

So use them. Use them well.

Understand the fundamentals and put them to work. Take from the past into the present to make the future better.

Try to be patient. Great ideas are born in quiet moments spent trying to remember the name of a book or an actor or that restaurant. Don’t google it. Think about it.

Build a mental filing cabinet of ideas, experiences and memories. Instead of documenting it all via Instagram and Twitter and Facebook, connect by disconnecting sometimes. Have a social life that enhances your social media existence.

If digital natives are to be truly great, they’ll go to school and study the Classics and Philosophy and dead languages and they will reinvent the wheel in beautiful ways. It’s never a good idea to think the present is more important than the past.

Equally important, especially in this social media wonderland, is to stop putting so-called experts up on a pedestal. The web has made it possible for everyone to be a be a maven or a guru on their own bio page and have it become “fact.” For every digital native with something to learn, there is an expert in need of education as well.

Let’s make actions speak louder than words or birth dates or Twitter followers. Let’s quit with the us versus them business and work together. The web is vast, and ever-evolving. Let’s grow with it together.

If Emily Posted - The When

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Math was never my favorite subject, but in college I took a course in sacred geometry that blew my mind. At 20, I found an appreciation for the way numbers, nature and our everyday lives intertwine. I wish we were taught sacred geometry from childhood, made to see math as more than rote exercises. In middle school, as I’d head to Drama Club after school, I never understood the why someone would join Math Club. Now I do. There is beauty in numbers.

But the thing about numbers is that they are what they are. Ten minutes is ten minutes. An hour is an hour.

Time is something I never have enough of these days. And it’s probably my least favorite thing about living right here now in this very moment. The future was supposed to filled with all sort of modern conveniences but the speed with which we can move, read, watch and share is exhausting (thanks, conveniences!).

I feel super old, but happily nostalgic, sharing with my young cousins stories of waiting to get photos back from the lab (a whole day?), of waiting for the video store to get back one copy of the movie you wanted (queue wasn’t really a word used Stateside until Netflix, kiddos), of waiting until someone got off the phone to be able to reach them or leave a message on their tape machine (when they ask what a tape is, try not to cry).

We used to listen to lots of busy signals. And yet, we weren’t so impatient.

Yesterday I was discussing to-do list strategies on twitter with other freelancers. Most weekends I call workends. My work lacks that sort of definition. The sort of thing we’re primed for in school.

I was once told by a teacher that we had antiquated bells between classes to prepare us for work in factories.

Imagine if those bells were to prepare us for a life online - it would be a cacophony of chimes and whistles and twittering birds.

I recently read about something called Attention Deficit Trait (ADT). Dr. Edward Hallowell, who coined the term, was interviewed by TIME magazine:

“The pace of most people’s lives these days induces it. We’ve never seen in human history the technology that we have today. I think it’s basically technology driven. Why are we doing it? The short answer is because we can—because we can transmit so much information, we do. Because we can access so much information, we do. Because we can sign up for so many tasks, we do.”

It’s fascinating, and I think it’s something most of us can relate to. The really scary part?

That interview was from January 2006.

Facebook was barely two years old and still just for students. iPhones were a year away. As was twitter.

In January 2006, we were practically tree sloths. Cue those bells.

I think there’s value in all of these social media tools, totally. I disagree when people say they’re just toys.

But here’s the thing: I have accepted the fact that I will never read, write, see or do all the things I want in a day. Or in this lifetime. But how I spend my time is of value to me.

I was at a dinner with some blog friends last summer. A small dinner party celebrating with Holly Becker and Leslie Shewring upon the release of Holly’s book.

Over sangria and pomme frites, the question of how you decide what to read in this sea of information came up. My answer was this:

Offline I buy books and magazine subscriptions. Online most content is free. So, I imagine if I had to pay to read blogs, where would I subscribe? Where would I put my money. Because time has value. Time is money.

Make a list of the sites you’d want a yearly subscription to. Highlight the ones you’d even want to give gift subscriptions to because they have info you often share.

Quite easily I can make a short list of the sites that I find the most useful, informative and entertaining. It doesn’t mean I won’t visit others, but it shows me that I can create some ordered chaos in my online day.


For productivity, nothing beats an old fashioned egg timer. I used to use a kitchen one but now my iPhone does the trick. I first read about it in a magazine and then some bloggers mentioned it, too. It works well when you have various projects and need to allot time to them through the day. It also forces me to take breaks. Breaks are important. The more I use the timers, I create good habits. I narrow my focus and get more done.

Creativity is about habit, Twyla Tharp reminds us time and again (love that book). As lovely as it would be to imagine writing as a fountain of inspiration into which we can dip when we choose, it’s not. It’s a lot of staring at a blank screen/page and really great ideas that don’t pan out. And some that do.

The timers help me keep me focused, keep me productive and keep me from losing my mind.

Maybe bells aren’t just for factory work after all.