By Darcy Gervais
Staff Writer
Computer-based technology has revolutionized the way we communicate with our current friends, connect with old ones, and effortlessly meet new ones with the click of a button.
Sites like Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr are immensely popular – household names that millions of people use to stay connected.
Rewind twenty years, before this technological revolution took effect, when people used letters and post cards to write to friends. When people spent hours discussing their days on the telephone with their families.
The shifts in technology have evolved a great deal in a very short period of time, and a lot of older residents who have been alive for at least fifty years are still trying to wrap their heads around these changes in the ways which we communicate.
“When I was in high school we didn’t have a telephone in my house. We didn’t have computers, in fact, I don’t even think that computers were around back then. Let’s see, I was eighteen in 1946 and I think the first computer came out in the 1950’s. If you wanted to talk to someone you had to do so in person. I don’t understand kids these days with their computers and e-mails and texting and all that crap. Life isn’t what it used to be, that’s for sure,” eighty-two year old Westford resident Gena Gervais said.
Computers and other modern technology are second nature to the people who grew up around it and use it on a daily basis. Most of those people couldn’t imagine living without using a computer every day to search the answer to a question on Google or to see what their friends are up to based on their Facebook status.
“I grew up with a computer in my house. I got a Facebook when I was eleven and got my first e-mail address when I was seven. I use the computer every single day and I’m addicted to Facebook. If I didn’t have a computer or if I couldn’t go on Facebook, I’d be so bored all day, I’d want to die,” thirteen year old Billerica Resident Sarah Gervais said with a laugh.
Computers and social networking sites are great ways to stay connected and in the loop of what more than three-quarters of the population seems to be infatuated with. Whether you are a thirteen-year-old middle school student or an eighty-something year old senior citizen, you are most likely aware of the impact that the internet and the numerous social networking sites have had on our society and how popular they’ve become.
Whether you own one or not, whether you’re for or against the immeasurable impact they’ve had on the world, computers and social networking sites are here to stay.
