附教学材料：
So Close, Yet So Far
Where am I? What am I doing? If you're one of my 500 friends online, you'll always be the first to know. My phone and laptop are never out of touching distance, so I'm constantly posting updates on social media － whether I'm having a coffee, on my way to school, watching TV ... even when I'm in the shower. As soon as I open my eyes in the morning, I check through all my social networking apps, read my emails and answer text messages. I do the same thing all over again while I'm having breakfast.
I live in a university dorm with a couple of great roommates. I have a never-ending flow of messages and updates from all the people I associate with online. Yet the truth of the matter is: I feel lonely.
I'm barely the only person who feels this way. According to research, over two-thirds of young people find it easier to make friends online than it is “in real life”. I'm way beyond a shy or reserved person, but I'm wired up every day, like most of my friends. On the surface, I have an active social life. I attend parties and play sports but I'm always distracted. They say that phones bring people closer together but in reality, my mind is always a million miles away. I obsess over exactly how many followers I have on my account, but I can't remember the birthdays of some of my oldest mates.
Social networking dominates my life in so many ways. Sometimes I set deadlines for myself: I will start doing my homework at 8 pm, and aim to finish in two hours. At 7:50 pm, I'm still scrolling through my friends' silly posts and photos. Before I know it, it's 9:30 pm and I still haven't moved an inch from the sofa. I download song after song, video after video, but I'm not really paying attention. The stimulation is in chasing after the next song rather than truly enjoying it. My friends try to drag me away from my phone, but as soon as I'm alone again, I'm desperate to get back to the online world and the intense activity that it provides.
I constantly feel depressed, dissatisfied and alone. Since I spend so much time socialising online, I keep delaying things that are important in my real life: homework, tasks, connecting with my friends and family members in a meaningful way. It's funny that my friends and I chatter away online so much, but we end up having nothing to say when we meet.
A few days ago, I went out for a dinner get-together with some friends. My best friend left the table for 30 minutes because he had to take a call. Some spent the dinner bending over their phones, texting friends online but ignoring the ones who sat right in front of them. And the extraordinary thing is nobody thought this was rude; it's just how life is nowadays. On a family holiday last summer, my sister spent all her time complaining that she needed to charge her phone. When it was charged, she just spent hours reading about her favourite popstar; not once did she lift her head to enjoy the view outside her window.
What is really worrying is that no one I know, including myself, could go cold turkey. I can't even imagine going without social networking for a week － think of all the important appointments, invitations and news updates you would miss! Alcoholics who want to quit drinking can avoid booze, but how do we give up our phones? After all, I need it for my studies because my teachers and classmates need to contact me at any time.
So, that's the problem with social networking. We're hard-wired in, but we're more disconnected than ever.
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