Friend Request

When my mom joined modern-day society, my world changed. It happened when I saw a familiar message pop up on Facebook. "Jen's mom" wants to be friends with you. Do you accept? That lady in the picture looked an awful lot like the lady who gave birth to me, but there was no way she knew what Facebook was. She didn't even know how to turn on a computer. With an immediacy of a wild mongoose, I clicked "no" and closed my screen, hoping the friend invite was just a glitch in the universe - a momentary black hole whose vortex happened to be in the center of my little apartment.

When my mom joined modern-day society, my world changed. It happened when I saw a familiar message pop up on Facebook. "Jen's mom" wants to be friends with you. Do you accept? That lady in the picture looked an awful lot like the lady who gave birth to me, but there was no way she knew what Facebook was. She didn't even know how to turn on a computer. With an immediacy of a wild mongoose, I clicked "no" and closed my screen, hoping the friend invite was just a glitch in the universe - a momentary black hole whose vortex happened to be in the center of my little apartment.

Leopold 1450 W. Chicago Ave. 312-348-1028 Rating: !!! (out of 4) Off to a good start The Scene: On a recent Saturday night, we found West Town eatery Leopold busy enough to feel happening, but not so packed that we couldn't score a table for four with zero notice. The long, corridor-like space starts with lounge seating in the front window and ends in the back with an open kitchen. In between, an extra-long bar lit by hanging candlelabras runs along one side of the room, while banquettes upholstered with creamy off-white fabric line the other.

Life is hard, man. Besides the daily struggles with paying those student loan s, waking up on time for work and always missing that Red Line train by just a few seconds, we counterintuitively struggle with Internet and social media dependency while constantly side-eyeing each other over passive aggressive Facebook statuses and mixed message tweets. Is anything real these days?! Sigh. OK, it's not that bad. But it's definitely annoying. Social media allows us to let our freak flags fly 24/7, but it also gives us free reign to fake happiness for others, hide behind emoticons and straight up...

Melodramatic? Maybe a little. But, seriously, your obsession with social media and your Instagram feed is probably sending you straight to Crazy Town.   I tend to roll my eyes at every report about a new “study” just released that contains mostly alarmist “results,” because, much of the time, context is not provided and a “study” of a few hundred people by some crackpot scientist isn't the most reliable piece of information. That being said... a new survey conducted in the UK about the effect of social media on...