Picture by Will Harris, from Virginia
When I opened my Facebook page this morning, the picture to the left was at the top of my NewsFeed. Taken by my colleague and friend Will Harris, who lives in Virginia and is right in Hurricane Irene’s path, it was accompanied by the note that, yes, his power is going to be out for a while. Then how…? Oh, duh. Mobile upload from his phone.
But what happened next was that I immediately began scrolling down through my feed, searching out posts from all my friends on the East Coast to see how they were faring. I could do a hashtag search on #Irene and probably get just as much news. The advantage to following my friends’ posts on Facebook and Twitter is that I get the answer to the question that most concerns me – how are are my friends doing?
The reason this is relevant to us, as parents, trying to teach our kids how to consume media in a healthy way is that the way we get our news is rapidly changing. Twitter and Facebook have taken over TV’s best game in the news business, by providing even better raw eye-witness testimony even faster than a TV crew can. As a result, more of us are getting our news from sources outside the traditional media, which in this case, can be a very good thing.
So my question is how are you tracking what’s going on with Hurricane Irene? Are you watching the coverage on The Weather Channel? Some other network? Are you reading tweets? Facebook posts? Google + posts? Are your kids tracking it? Why are your and/or your family tracking the hurricane? Do you have relatives and/or friends on the East coast? Are you just curious? What?
Come join the conversation by posting a comment below. I’ll be checking all day so that I can get comments posted as quickly as possible. Also, if you happen to be reading this on Facebook page, please come over to the site, http://yourfamilyviewer.com/?p=4127, and comment here, if possible.
I’m looking forward to hearing from you.
