"Generation Like" - A New Term I Recently Learned About

Good Afternoon and welcome to another "Rant" - this will be a very short one. I was watching an episode on FRONTLINE entitled "Generation Like" this morning and found myself sitting after it was over saying "My God how things have changed".

Now I realize that things have always been changing but every once in awhile something occurs that makes me take a step back and really notice the difference. Case in point the show I watched this morning.  This episodes focus was on how important it has become to accumulate "Like" hits on photos, videos and profiles that are put on the various social networks.

Now let's face it we all want people to like the things that we do but this has taken on a whole new life of it's own. It has not only become extremely important (this focus was mainly on teenagers) to accumulate hundreds and thousands of like hits to the individual poster but also (now here's a really big surprise) to manufacturers.

Remember back in the day (this might be a bit of a stretch) when you watched commercials on TV for products or a friend or family member might tell you about something great that they bought. Well marketers now (although they have been doing this for awhile - I'm just a little slow on the draw)  have found another strategy for determining who and what to target by following what's being posted on the various social networks and more important how many "Like" hits there are.

Ok, that's how things work I get it but what I discovered from the show was it's also prompting young people to really push the envelope in the hopes of gaining fame and maybe fortunes. Again I know this has always been what people do in one way or another but sometimes I can't help but feel that extra added pressure is put on kids today. 

So I will yield to the way the world is today and acknowledge that "Oh the times are a changing" and I know that that's what happens - as a society we evolve and with that comes change - but I can't help but wish sometimes that maybe the changes were not coming so fast.