Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Our World of Instant Gratification

Have you ever thought about how Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have made us even more addicted to instant gratification than our consumer oriented society already was?

You know how it goes…you suddenly can’t remember the name of an artist who sang a song; an actor who played in a certain movie; a move that a certain actor was in or you are insanely determined to find out how old some celebrity is.  Maybe it’s a sports question you are struggling to answer, who did win the World Series in 1969? (I know that one) or when did UCONN win both the men’s and women’s national titles in the same year? (I know that one too).  In the “old” days, I would have certain people that I would call (yes actually call on the land-line phone) to ask specific categories of these gnawing questions.  The thing is that if you don’t get the answer immediately, you know it is going to continue to bug you until you do.

Cell phones gave us the ability to reach someone right away and get our instant gratification fix and texting makes that even easy.  Our smartphones put Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube right in our hands and it is as easy as whipping out our phones and finding out anything, anywhere, anytime.

We tweet the question, ask our “friends” on Facebook and of course, check with Google who instantly gives us the answer often before we finish speaking or typing the question.  Wikipedia may not have every detail correct or it may lack some information but it certainly provides us with knowledge that is immensely more timely than going to find an encyclopedia.  I had the World Book Encyclopedia as a kid.  I can’t imagine the vast amount of updated and timely information I could have gleaned from the likes of Google.

You might suggest that Americans tend to be instant gratification people and that Google, Facebook Twitter, YouTube (and many other sites) just fuel that need to know passion.  Does this ability to have information instantly at our fingertips transfer to other parts of our lives?  Do we want relationships to be exactly the way we want NOW or we move on?  Do we feel the same way with jobs and careers?  Do we get frustrated with many things in our lives if we cannot understand or fix it right now?  Maybe so but I have no judgement one way or the other on those things. We live longer, experience more life experiences and change is a constant.

What about our constant need to have our phones with us?  To have access to Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Shazam and other sites 24/7 so that we never again have to “go crazy” trying to figure out a song, author, actor or fact of any kind.

I like having all that information at my fingertips.  Often when Google gives me an answer to something it causes me to pursue more research on the subject. When I recently looked up the Choptank River because I’m listening to Michener’s epic book Chesapeake, I found myself going from website to website learning more about more about the area and it’s history.

Curiosity is a wonderful human trait.  America was founded on curiosity, innovation and the quest for knowledge in all forms.  I’m happy that we have Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and many other applications that allow us to pursue those aims and instantly gratify our need to know.  It has the potential to lead us down so many unknown paths to great discoveries.

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