I would erase social media, and here’s my argument. Of course, after you read it, you can comment, like it, give me a thumbs up, subscribe, and we can be friends.
I think social media is a complete waste of time and a distraction. I actually hate the term “social media.” The phrase began appearing in the mid-1990s, but there’s very little that’s social about it anymore.
I remember my first encounter with the platform MySpace in early 2003 when my daughter, then 12, started playing around with it. Then in 2004, Facebook made the scene. Everybody was on that platform, even me. Then FarmVille came along and, come on… who didn’t want the biggest farm?
The whole concept seemed logical, and I do admit it has some value, but the notion of having hundreds of friends started to get weird. I think this is where people started to hang their self-worth on what others thought of them, looking at what you said and counting likes. It also created a strange reach into online bullying.
This started gradually. People stopped talking, or at least having meaningful conversations. It was just back-and-forth comments, almost to the point of seeing who could make the last comment. Maybe it branched off, and others would jump in with comments and likes. No resolution, just mindless banter until the next cat video.
Then I remember one of my daughter’s friends, also around 12 at the time, saying she had 500 friends. I was probably in my forties, and I bet I hadn’t even met 500 people, never mind called them friends. I was just laughing.
Now we see people hide behind a screen and their army of online friends. They debate silly points with no substance, and threads or sub-comments start taking sides. Insults became easy behind a keyboard. In my day, this might have ended with a roll in the parking lot, but the issue would have been settled. Now it has become endless sniping with no resolution.
The final piece is what all of this did to us as a society. People no longer talked outside. “I’ll send you an IM.” “Did you see my Facebook message?” “Look, I ate cheese with chocolate milk!” The algorithm keeps the nonsense going, and we don’t even realize it.
Nobody talks anymore, or at least in a way I’d call social. That’s the irony. We live in a world where strength comes from anonymous numbers rather than real conversations, and this has led us down a strange path. I’m just more inclined toward face-to-face conversations where you hash it out, rather than the back-and-forth and clicks this media has created.
I’m also not crazy. I love a good cat video knocking the cup off the table. I mean, it does have its merits.
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