Social media join their hands for Japan

Since Friday the 11^th , Japan has been stricked by disaster after disaster. First the 8.9-magnitude earthquake, which also caused a tsunami and now the people in Japan are struggling with a possible nuclear disaster and terrible cold. The authorities have identified 8,133 dead people and more than 12,000 people are still missing.

While the earthquake destroyed the electricity supplies and shut down two nuclear power plants, Internet availabilty stays practically unaffected. This allows victems of the earthquake to connect with friends and families by using social media to ensure their conditions and whereabouts.

Social media not only help the earthquake victems to connect with their family and friends, it is also a medium to raise money for the victems. Like my collegae Inge Haagmans mentioned, Groupon launched a special webpage where people can donate money to the Red Cross. 

Besides that Twitter is also used to inform the people in Japan about the latest developments. Wednesday, the Japanese prime minister opened a twitter account in English to inform people about evacuations, press conferences and other developments. In the first couple of hours, the account gathered 7,000 followers and at the moment, more than 15,000 tweeps are following @JPN_PMO, which translates tweets of the Japanese disaster information account @Kantei_Saigai.

I warn you!

As mentioned in one of the previous blogs “Are you addicted?”, a social media addiction does really exist. Besides an addiction, social media apparantly can cause another “disease” called a social media burn-out. According to Internet expert Jim Stolze, more and more people in their thirties are suffering from a social media burn-out. “As soon as you turn on your mobile phone, laptop or Ipad, the messages start to come in. This can be pleasant, but also very compulsory” according to Jim Stolze.

An example is Boele Ytsma, once called the Internet vicar. He believes that in his case his burn-out was caused due to the fact that his attention was so distracted by the social media. In order to recover, Ytsma discontinued his Twitter and Facebook accounts and nowadays he checks his email account only a few times a week.

Why people in their thirties? People who are younger are used to the fact that not all the information received is manageble but older people, who experience real letters and stamps can’t get used to the fact that they have to make a choice between all the informations flows.

This means that us youngsters don’t belong to the high-risk group but if you do get a social media burn-out in the future, you can’t say that I did’t warn you!