A reflection on staying online

More than half of office workers use sites like Twitter and Facebook for personal use during the working day, and admit wasting an average of 40 minutes a week each.

One in three of the 1,460 office workers surveyed also said they had seen sensitive company information posted on social networking sites, leading to fears about how workers use the internet.

Philip Wicks, consultant at Morse, the IT services and technology company who commissioned the survey, said the true cost to the economy could be substantially higher than the £1.38bn estimate.(Telegraph)

Above news article made me to think about my internet usage.

Discussion about advantages and disadvantages of the use of Internet is a sort of boring topic, commonly found in the study of foreign language schools. But I have to say that the emergence of social networks enables people to extend their contact list, discussing an issue in a wider scale and conducting a campaign for and against something up to a global level, at the expense of their private time, which can be used more effectively in other ways, in order to upgrade the working position and family welfare.

Probably, most individuals have their intended life time achievement. Obviously, I never think about myself to become a famous blogger or a great twitter user with a thousand of followers. If not, why have I been spending a colossal amount of time in front of computer, by clicking facebook and twitter links? At this point, my reflective practice came into an action to judge my next step. The verdict is that I need to change sooner rather than later.

Reflective practice is a continuous process and involves the learner considering critical incidents in his or her life's experiences. It is also associated with learning from experience(Wiki)

A few months ago, I had to struggle tremendously to complete my tasks at work. It happened after wasting my time on-line uselessly. Learning from experience means less time on-line, planning to do mandatory jobs in a fixed time frame.

I like this quotation.

“Change will never happen when people lack the ability and courage to see themselves for who they are.” (Bryant H. McGill )

My opinion is that people should need to upgrade their social environment and working situation from time to time whenever possible as part of the quality of life improvement process. It is not the right way to stay in one community life long. I came across some people from far east who were confined in the group of same people, even after residing in Britain for years or decades. I am wondering what would be their point of living in Britain. It is very reasonable that the government introduced the Knowledge of life in the UK exam for settlement status applicants, encouraging them to learn briefly what the Britishness is.

We are social-beings. There are some people who enormously enjoy the virtual world for many reasons, one of which it would be a result of withdrawal from the community after not achieving any positive communication. That model is common among immigrants. For a temporary basis, involving with on-line community seems an effective for a loneliness. But what would be the long term effect? How much have I lost because of Facebook, Twitter and cbox?