Matthew Gates 2m 474 #socialmedia
The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.
The Key To Social Media Limits
Social Media is the best thing to happen to the Internet and the world since it really took off in 2004 with social media networks like MySpace, Facebook, and eventually Twitter. It would take several years for these and other media networks to become mainstream, finally taking their place in the world of actual media news. Social Media spreads news faster than mainstream media and is on 24/7 and is free for everyone to use.
It is far cheaper and more reliable than mainstream news, however, it can also be filled with false and inaccurate information. With so much information available on the Internet, we can become overwhelmed, but addicted to finding out more and more information. How many people spend hours in their day surfing social media channels? Clicking on cat pictures, looking videos of cute puppies, and leaving comments on things they have opinions about? What else could these people be doing with their time?
Whether you use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, or any other social media network out there, you are getting distracted. While it is very beneficial for some people who use it to make a living, for everyone else, it is a bit distracting. Distraction away from family and kids, away from time spent with each other communicating or making love, distraction away from being human. Social Media is simply keeping us from being ourselves, and can certainly be distracting at work.
Social media has connected us worldwide and brought people together, but has also caused people to drift further apart. It is “social anti-social media”, in which we are more open to communicating with others through disassociative text, but we are losing out on interpersonal communication and real interaction with others. It is making us more anti-social than social, as we become more introverted, and yet it has become completely acceptable in our society.
Instead of calling someone on the phone, we prefer to text, or send them a message on Facebook, Twitter, or post something on their wall, believing this has real meaning. While it is good to write to someone or message them, as we may not all have the time to call every single one of our friends every day or every week or every month, we are not as close to our friends as we believe we may be, including the once-a-year-post where we might wish them a happy birthday because we were reminded on Facebook.
Social Media tends to distract us from being productive, from reading, from interacting, from being creative, from learning new things, from visiting new places, or meeting new people and actually interacting. The psychological effects are not just on the individual, but society as a whole, is has become more accepting of the social media age, in which, we are all social media introverts.
(
