October 23, 2012 Hunter DeVries TX. Fremont High Just what's SO social about social' media? Like, Tweet, Share, Favorite, push, tap, sit, wait and stare. Why do we make the biggest deal out of social media? Now before you judge me, I am on Facebook and Twitter but why is it that the world now seems to revolve around these websites? I'll tell you why, it's because we as a society are constantly on these and other social media sites. If you have a smart phone in your pocket right now then I am willing to bet that you are logged on to Facebook or Twitter. Or if you go to your computer at home, I bet one of your favorite tabs is a social network site or search engine. I'm right, am I not? It all just shows how crazy our "social media" actually is. I mean social media is great for talking to friends or family across the world and for sending messages to them, but when it gets to the point that you only text or tweet your friends to hang out, then that's crazy, pur addiction to "social" media is actually cutting back from real social interaction like talking or dating. I know friends, for example, who have texted to ask for dates and you know what's crazier, the girl said yes! Now I am not saying that this a shameful thing or anything but I just think that if you are going to ask a girl out then you should be courteous Ipugh to call or talk to her face to 223 Another thing that bugs me is that some people just spend their weekends looking at that wall of comments, on a screen, from "friends." Well, here's an idea: How about you invite some friends over to watch a movie or play a serious game of "Apples to Apples"? That way you get to post or tweet pictures of yourself actually doing something with your friends besides hiding behind a computer screen. My advice to you is to establish your limits and set your zones when it comes to using social media. Don't be the person who is constantly updating your status or even "Facebook Istalking" regularly. Just set a place and time to do things online, and then you'll find that you actually have real time to hang out with your friends. For example, if you were to finish that serious game of "Apples to Apples," then you could post that you •and a few friends just had an intense game of "Apples to Apples," instead of simply liking posts of activities that your friends are doing. Another few examples would be playing night games at a park, playing glow tennis, or playing hide 'n seek in a Walmart. The point is to let your imagination go wild and to have real "fun" with your friends. You want to know something ludicrous? We spend, on average, 15 hours and 33 minutes per month on Facebook, according to articles. businessinsider.com, which breaks down to 31.1 minutes a day. If you times that by the 750 million active users a day, you get 23,325,000,000 minutes. We could create so many things with all that time like clean up our world, stop food shortages, or even fcure cancer. So what if that happened; what if we didn't get on Facebook for a whole day, which would be 23,325,000,000 minutes or 44,348.4 years literally in a day? That would change the world. But the big question is would you do it? We could all take up this challenge and share it on our walls and we'll call it OFFLINE. Now don't stop social networking because it's a huge part of today's world but make sure that it doesn't rule your world either. Don't let words that you put on a screen express what you do in your life — but live it. Hunter DeVries is a senior at Fremont High School who says, "If you want to join the day-off-Facebook challenge and set apart one day later this year, email me at huntdevries35@ yahoo.com and together we'll decide how to make our difference."