I hear people complaining about social networks and digital lifestyles all day long. "It ruins our humanity", "It damages our personality", "it's an addiction".
Well, let me explain why I think the digital world is going to save us all and why hating it means hating progress.
Who created social networks?
Humans created social networks. And they work the same as other businesses. They solve people's problem.
Why should 2 BILLION people be on Facebook if it doesn't solve their problem?
Why should a big percentage of them take news only from it if they don't believe it facilitates their lives?
Social networks was created by human developers and, as you don't blame plastic bottles to make you dependent, you can't blame a social network for all the problems in your life.
It doesn't make you heartless
I met all my best friends online. I've had strong friendship I'm grateful of and I've had lots of opportunities in business, life and human activities.
Social networks gave me the possibilities to delete phisical boundries like age, city or country. They even made possible for me to express myself freely with blogs, photos, videos and tutorial to exploit my creativity.
Internet made me a better human being by furnishing me with great contents, great teachings and great people to my life. It seems incredible, but as always you need to focus on the bright side of something to find the useful things you're searching for in that something.
You can't complain you found just porn over the internet if porn was the only thing you were searching for. Internet is the biggest human community on the planet with 3 BILLIONS member and growing. We should start to aknowledge it's not an enemy but a great ally to learn, teach, play and create in a better way.
Not everyone knows how to use it
Theny why don't we teach everyone how to use it?
Using the internet itself is a very basic task. You can explain to a 10 years old kid how to use a browser, search for videos on Youtube and create articles in just 4 hours - probably.
It takes less to explain how to use a computer and the internet rather than explain how to do mind calculations even though we all have the calculator on the smartphone.
You can also teach how to use the net to older people, since the basic features of this technology are very easy to understand. Humans create stuff based on their previous knowledge, so it's always possible to explain something to older people using their measures of comparison. For example, to teach a 70 years old grandmother how to search for cartoons on youtube, you should compare this search as the research process of a famous media star of their time. If they can relate a new thing they're learning to the old standards they were used to, it shouldn't be so hard and the learning curve may be lower then we think.
Conclusion
I think the digital World gave us the possibility to connect better, create without barriers and teach without money (internet gives most of his precious resources for free).
In the future, the net may give us the possibility to end robot jobs humans continue to do each day. It may also solve our economic problems by giving us new tools to empower ourselves and our communities.
Thinking of it as a dangerous enemy is stopping the progress.
The problem is: you may believe it. You may believe internet is dangerous. But how can you pretend something is going to stop if it's clear that his ending is far from near?
Internet is not going to stop conquering more and more fields (giving us the possibilities to do more in those fields, not less). Because the way we structured jobs makes it impossible for new technologies to hold back until everyone agree on them.
So, if you believe the internet is dangerous, I truly believe you should consider giving it a second chance.
BONUS
Tell me what is your passion in the comment. It may be drawing, teaching, learning, programming, building structures, do math problems, and so on.
I will give you tools digital agencies are providing for free to solve your problems on those matters. Or, at least, I will suggest you tools that will empower your opportunities in those fields.
If you don't have a clear passion you want tools for, just comment with something you want to learn more about. I will give you websites or free courses that will suit your needs.