New SixContest! What are you for? What do you believe in?Say it in Six!
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Author: Allison Keene

My mom's on Facebook so now we know it's official: social media is the new face of communication. Every day, millions of users are choosing to communicate through them rather than IRL (in real life).

Social Media provides its users with unique advantages and privileges, not the least of which include anonymity, the ability to communicate with a wide audience, new creative platforms, and opportunities for innovation. Huge upsides, for sure, yet growing discussion points to the changes that internet culture has wreaked on traditional society. Collectively, we wonder how our attraction to the internet lifestyle has affected us or, as some science suggests, altered us. By replacing IRL communication with internet interaction, it is unclear what, if anything, we are sacrificing.

The Six-Word community is very vocal on the subject of Social Media and its effects on daily life. The memoirs below discuss both the benefits and drawbacks of this new type of communication that, regardless of whether we embrace or reject it, is here to stay.

Some in the social media aren't.

- Staraj

Social media: lightning communication, silent people.

- JohnnyEdwards

VIVA LA RESISTANCE! Resisting Social Media.

- Revolutionary

Oh God! My mother's on Facebook!

- TwoScoops

Unfriended aunt, not social media responsible.

- PrincessLief

Discovering childhood favorites on YouTube: Priceless!

- BrightLight2

Watching myself on YouTube. How liberating.

- somethingnew

Lonelier since advent of social media.

- ChewyD2

Texting? Emailing? Twittering? Sending postcards instead.

- favepeep

Leave me alone. I'm social media-ing.

- rosavie

Tumblr is fixed; life can resume.

- BecomingLogyn

Have created a curriculum on YouTube.

- jossy

Social media break; learned a lot.

- MaryValle

Joan, "Explain to me the Twitter."

- marymc

Silhouette

Having secrets is a part of being human. By keeping parts of our lives private, we give ourselves the chance to form an identity apart from the public sphere and, in turn, an independent sense of self. In sharing our secrets with others, we choose to share our most private selves; the telling and keeping of secrets a very intimate matter in any relationship.

In a world where social media is reinventing the style and speed with which secrets are spilled, and America' most famous fugitive, Edward Snowden, is on the run for the secrets he shared, we thought it was time to gather a few of your most poignant Six-Word Memoirs on secrets.

Sometimes I keep secrets from myself.

- jl333

My novel is filled with secrets.

- ReannaKeller

Understanding patterns is secret to Life.

- ciofki

Soul of discretion. Keeper of secrets.

- ctgoods2

My inner NSA crushed my secrets.

- wescoll

My best secrets are Facebook statuses.

- JohnBigJohn

Secrets granted to those worth keeping.

- unknown116