I was “twittered” last week. Now, via text message and email, I am reminded to “tweet” at least once every 24 hours. That way other “twitts” are kept up to date on what I’m doing and thinking at all times.

For those who don’t understand one word of what I just said, let me edify you: Twitter.com is an online blog-like network that users update daily. Each “blog”, or “tweet,” is limited to 140 characters. When someone invites you to “follow” their tweets, they have “twittered” you. I consider those who use this site “twitts.”

Yes, including myself – including John McCain, “Joe Schmo,” Tina Fey, Martha Stewart, “Suzy Homemaker,” The New York Times, Britney Spears, “Crazy Cat Lady” and all the other famous, infamous and unknown individuals that also tweet.

From juicy secrets to profound philosophical inquiries, and researched political news reports to daily scribblings about mundane thoughts, actions and opinions, twitts can tweet about whatever they like.

“It’s a great networking tool,” my friend (who twittered me) said. He explained that I could post links to my Web site and articles, and that people could see me as a “real person” (opposed to what kind of person, I wasn’t sure).

And so, with the advancement of my career in mind, I became a twitt.

One of my favorite syndicated columnist’s, Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald, wrote an op-ed piece a few weeks ago about this online network titled, “Bag the tweets in a Twitter world.”

Spinning a negative tone about the site, Pitts said that people are “not just sharing secrets” but “are sharing lives. And not the good parts, either, but the banal, the mundane, the everyday.” He argues that although Twitter.com is being marketed as a means of bringing human relationships closer, the opposite is actually happening: it is enabling superficial people who are doing anything but communicating to one another.

Essentially, Pitts suggests that we have better things to do with our time than tweet.

After reading his take on the site, which has gained millions of members in the past three years, I became abruptly aware about how large the gap is between my parents’ generation (mid 30s-50s) and my own (teens-20s).

My mother, I think, exemplifies how people in her and Pitts’ generation live: she still reads a hard copy of the newspaper every night before bed (in fact, that is how she found Pitts’ column and cut it out for me to read), makes most telephone calls via land line and has no clue how to text message.

My generation, on the other hand, has been webbed into technology from birth. The average age kids today start using the computer is 3, and most send their first e-mail before starting kindergarten. We “communicate” to people via instant messaging, text message and cell phones while performing several other tasks at the same time. RSS feeds are the source of our news. We surf, skim and get bored easily.

Fast communication and multitasking can be considered both a perk and drawback of my generation, or what many are dubbing as the “Net generation.” This may be why they are looking for online identities, which mirror their realities: they are to the point and ever changing.

I considered my friend’s conception of what it means to be a “real person” on the Web: are people getting to know the “real me” through my daily 140 character blogs, or are they reading a manifestation of what I want people to know about me?

Sure, people can see that I am buying a strawberry milkshake from McDonalds (the fourth this week), that I am “secretly” happy that I was rejected from all four Ph.D. programs, and that I killed an un-killable plant because I still do not know the difference between a perennial and an annual. But those are only clips of me.

And that is exactly what Web sites like Twitter.com are doing: creating superficial “clips” of people and calling it “reality.”

I agree with Pitts to an extent we probably have better things to do than tweet the dumb stuff.

And yet, because the Internet is the sole source people my age get information from – because superficiality is becoming the wave of the future – it can be an effective way to send non-dumb information to an otherwise uninterested audience.

I want to say that it is the “real” twitts who base their entire lives on these types of sites that give tweeting and twittering a bad name. But who knows if I’m right, I might be one of them.

Originally Published Sunday, March 29, 2009