My opinion on the effect of social media on society
Disclaimer: This is my opinion based on personal experience, any sentence that might be read as a fact is just me fucking up the wording and should be read as an opinion. Also I will be limiting myself to how it changes behaviour amongst ourselves I am not going into the information being gathered/sold as that’s a different conversation for another time
I admit
I admit, I as many others me to have fallen for the charms of social media. As no matter what it does social media does have its charms and its positive sides (even though in this bog I’m only highlighting the ”Negatives” that I see) and I’ll continue using it.
The “Truth”
But what I’ve been realizing is that it is changing how we as a society are interacting with each other. Social media has started to be seen as the truth and facts about a person. If it is not on your social media it didn’t happen.
e.g. I have quite the couple of tattoos but because I do work with corporate clients I make sure that they can easily be covered at all times, I also never post them on Facebook (I just don’t feel the need to share every part of my life). So there are not a lot of people that know I have them. This one day I was wearing a short sleeved shirt and ran into one of my colleagues. She noticed one of my tattoos peeking out under of the sleeves. In shock and utter disbelieve she paused for a moment. I completely expected her to say something like ”YOU HAVE TATTOOS?!” but after a couple seconds she utters:
”Are those real, because I’ve not seen them on Facebook?”It goes as far as getting into conversation and a new topic starts in a way where you are just supposed to know what the other person is talking about just because:
”Huh? What do you mean you don't know? It was on Facebook.....”
A friend of mine mainly uses her Facebook for herself and once in a while her kids, there never is a man in the picture, so when she posted she was pregnant again people that didn’t know her that well, kept asking her who the father was. While all this time she has been happily married, for an undisclosed reason her husband just prefers to stay off of social media.
Again I have to admit, I also notice that once in a while I perceive Facebook as having the “complete truth”. E.g. when a relationship status is not set I assume that person is single, once in a while leading to quite the embarrassing/hilarious situations.
The Insta-pause
Going somewhere and doing things with friends used to be something secluded to those present and maybe the ones having to listen to the stories for years after.
In comes the Insta-pause… The insta-pause comes from today's need to share everything with everyone all the time, An insta-pause is the time where your activity has to be paused so you or anyone else can take that obligatory Instagram picture so the outside world can be involved. This in my opinion is a double edged sword on one side it expands your presence of the community and enforces your bonds with them. On the other side you are weakening the bond with the persons present at the activity (especially if they, don’t share the same social media sentiment) and other persons that might be attending the same activity with their own party but can’t see because the insta-pause of the person standing in front of them is blocking their view.
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Split personality
In my experience people that are extremely active tend to go through a split of their personality. They’ll have their “social media” personality and their normal one.
On social media they start pretending to be a certain person, usually nice, kind, active, fun and receiving. This personality you’ll also find when they go out to events where they “need” to apply the Insta-pause.
But when being with them on normal day to day activities, they are someone completely else.
Well if this is your cup of tea it’s not necessarily a bad thing, I guess. But personally I pick my friends for being “real” people, people that are their “real” selves in any situation. It just makes me feel better knowing that when a friend says something or has a good time it is because they actually mean it, and it’s not a persona they put up to get more likes.
What is a friend
This bring me these days, what is a friend… A friend used to be a person you’d go do things with, could always count on, some one that knew you and was there for you when needed.
But what is a friend these days? Yes the “old school” friends luckily still exist, but with the rise of social media “Having a friend” no longer means the same… Friends have become a means of gathering likes and popularity, the amount of friends has become a form of status. They are no longer required to know who you are as long as they like your photos or posts. Asking “how are you” has become a way to pretend to show interest and has become a sentence where no answer is expected (unless it is “good, and you” an equally meaningless sentence)
I’ve been asked on multiple occasion sometimes in a demeaning way
”Why do you have less than 100 friends on Facebook?”
Well I refer to what I said before under ”Split personality”, I prefer real friends even on my Facebook, Quality over quantity and all that jazz. Being a traveller making friends all over the world, Facebook for me is a means to keep in contact with all these people, and to share my experiences with them. Random strangers I never met I simply have no interest in sharing my life with.
Fair is fair there are things I like to share with the whole world. One of these things would be my art, but for this I have my Instagram.
Conclusion
Even though Social media has its charm and most certainly has its place in society there is no denying that it has changed us as a society and how we interact and see each other.
I think we no longer value our friends and close ones the way we used to do before and we’ve become fuelled by likes and followers while sacrificing closeness and “realness”.
I told you my point of view, what do you think? Do you agree/disagree? Do you have any input/feedback/suggestions? Do you think 9/11 was an inside job? Comment and let me know.
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