Social Media
Many of the Thought topics I choose to write about are topics that have some age to them. I have had the opportunity to think about them for some time, and reflect on what others say about them. Social media has come on the scene more recently, and by social media I mean the technology that allows one to continuously share information and life experiences with others, and the predilection for using that technology. Perhaps the word “obsession” could be substituted for predilection. Social media, IMHO (using an abbreviation common to this form of communication) is a game changer.
I’m hard pressed to think of any development that has had a comparable impact on the human condition and culture as social media. At the basic level, it is the synapse, if you will, that enables the passing of information between human transmitters and receivers that populate society’s brain. But it does much more than pass information. Each bit of information passed usually carries qualifiers and tags that express approval, disapproval, group appeals, wonder, self-identification, etc. And this information transfer occurs at such a speed and volume that more traditional forms of information transfer are overwhelmed and made less relevant.
It is seductive, it has an insatiable pull. Instinct tells us we should check the accuracy or impact of our information before we send it to others, but that takes time. We want the recognition of being there first with the information, or at the very least, flowing along in the information river. And so, concerns like “is it true?” “will this hurt someone?” “do I really want everyone to know this?” are decisional speed bumps that are quickly passed over to get the information out.
So, social media is time sensitive, in that it rewards the attentive and punishes the inactive. It also requires little effort, i.e., huge volumes of information are ready at our fingertips, already organized according to our “likes.” However, this also means huge volumes of disinformation are also there, without having gone through some of the more traditional filters and fact-checking processes. At its worst, social media, given too much legitimacy by the user, can lead to improper or unsafe actions based on disinformation.
To summarize the positives, social media is the best way to stay continuously connected to people you care about through the sharing of mutually-interesting information. Negatively, social media has become the method for obtaining information by the fastest means, that may or may not be accurate, does not demand critical thought, but causes a Pavlovian response to further spread it, through unknowable connections to people you may or may not have ever met, eliciting satisfying feelings of “belongingness” to an information group, that triggers an “anxiety clock” toward acquiring another piece of information.
Was that a mini-rant? Well, mini-rant over. And wait, did I just do this on social media?