Skills For Success

As a Baby Boomer who works across the generations I have been enjoying being "plugged" in to the technological changes the net has to offer in this exciting century. Yet I also enjoy the freedom of being "unplugged"  from the net.

In Dr, Larry Rosen's book "Me, MySpace, and I"  he fills parents and educators in on how social networking sites (e.g. MySpace and Facebook) can improve socialization skills as well as overall emotional health of today's kids.  Personally I, a Baby Boomer, am enjoying  Twitter, Facebook,  YouTube, and blogging.

However,  when I shared some of Rosen's points  with other Baby Boomers there was a lot of negative discussion about these rapidly emerging technological innovations on the net. Too much time wasted.  Too many changes too fast.  Too complicated a society.  Too plugged in!

Yet at the end of the day, we all agreed the net is not going to go away and that all generations can use some of these  innovations to our advantage. We also reminded ourselves that when we were initially bombarded with a host of television programs we had the freedom to choose what we wanted to watch -- we didn't watch everything all of the time.

So that brings me to the freedom of being "unplugged".  We know that Twitter,  Facebook, Blogs, etc. can be addictive - just like TV.  And just as Baby Boomers learned to turn off the TV, all three generations need to learn to unplug themselves from the net.