a study in Texas has decided that social media is making us more social.  Who would have knew?  Good news for facebook, I think, because their privacy issues & ownership of our data still give me great concern.  However social networks do provide a great platform for us to keep in touch with friends & family, no matter where they are in the world!  It seems everyone likes to complete their relationship status, as per the pie chart below:

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Gen Y who have come of age, are shaping the current social & technological environment.  I also note that as regards relationships & partners as a culture we may be suffering from a short attention span?  I was recently speaking with a guy who told me that their 17 year old daughter’s boyfriend broke up with her via email and I asked was she upset.  ’No not so much, she wasn’t really interested anyway, she is focusing on her studies!’  To me something is missing here, wot about some human courage & contact to finish as you started, but heh that’s just me!  Maybe as a culture we are suffering ADD???

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Web 2.0 & social media have created a culture where we almost have to market ourselves to be social with others. In this changed culture it is helpful to ask whether we are buying into our own brand or being our authentic selves? Fulfilling relationships with others are not possible unless we are real, brands and marketing don’t count when we are down to the wire. We need to be comfortable with our full range of possibilities: positive/negative, courageous/afraid, sad/happy, vulnerable/strong, loving/distant, kind/cruel and all the other gamut of humanness.

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as mentioned in past posts we all have different values in relationships & its important to identify our highest value & ensure that our close personal relationships can provide us with what we need.  For me I think the major value in a relationship is friendship.  I’m a boomer & loved being part of a group of friends at high school & remember my mother who it could be said never had a close friend whilst I was growing up, said to me ‘You love your friends more than you love your family!’  It may have been true and friends & my community of friends (although spread across the world now, having lived on a few continents) are still extremely important to me.

“Friendship is always a sweet responsibilty, never an opportunity.” Kahil Gibran

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I wrote a post last year why can’t dating sites be more like social networks and mentioned some mobile dating sites amongst others.  Since then location based apps and sites have sprung up all over the net and have become very popular.  Foursquare and Gowalla now regularly update to Twitter so that people can meet up with each other wherever they find themselves.  There is no more lonely or should I say alone?

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