Remember the Second Life platform, the online virtual world that allowed users to create, connect and chat with other users from all around the world using voice and text? A few years ago I posed a question on Facebook, primarily in relation to the Facebook platform, asking if Facebook was the new Second Life.
Well now I am updating that proposition and posing the question again, this time in relation to social media generally, in all its glorious or inglorious forms as the case may be!
Now there is Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, Google Hangouts, Diaspora, Minds, just to touch the tip of the iceberg. And just two years ago a new platform comes along, Steemit, promising users a share of the wealth being generated online which previously was simply sucked into the coffers of the social media giants.
So how many of us spend hours a day on social media, whether it is just interacting with friends and acquaintances, playing games to immersing oneself in the whole online social fabric, from collecting and posting recipes and useful information, to blogging, to online garage sales, to current news, to sharing and organizing events, to commenting on current issues affecting our local community, our State or the nation as a whole or engaging in full scale discussions and activism?
Whilst it seems that just about every online social activity links back to Facebook in some way or is conducted on Facebook personal pages, fan pages, community pages or business pages, that dynamic has gradually been shifting with the proliferation of new online services and the rapid, almost frenetic, pace of new mobile phone apps becoming available to tap into all these new services.
There seems to be two diametrically opposed schools of thought about the explosion of social media into just about every aspect of our lives.
It is a horrendous waste of time and we could better direct our time and energies into more productive pursuits.
Or, it enhances our daily lives in a myriad of ways unimaginable a little over a decade or so ago.
There are, in fact, many benefits including the aforementioned social interaction, which is essential for our emotional and mental well being, and which in turn either positively or negatively affects our physical well being.
Then there is the enormous learning potential it offers, simply by interacting with more people than we could possibly accommodate into our physical lives. I believe that if we don't learn something new, and hopefully useful and meaningful, every day that we are in fact wasting our lives.
I know myself that interacting with people on social media has taught me new things, some good, some bad, but it has for me always been a learning experience first and foremost! Online discussions have also caused me to research more things and I have learned a great deal that I would not otherwise have learned!!!
And, as with a lot of research, sometimes I come across something that may be completely off topic, but is interesting and informative or just damn amazing and out of this world, or sometimes just damn sick!
I do believe all this gives us more insight into our immediate physical world that we exist in each and every day as well as the world around us with all its amazing, awe-inspiring beauty and diversity, from the cultures of people past and present to the amazing wildlife and plant life on our planet and the incredible spectacle of natural and man-made wonders.
Hell, we can even sit at our computer and travel all around our own world via Google Earth and into the depths of our solar system and deep space.
As long as we still attend to our regular obligations and responsibilities and physically interact with family and friends on a regular basis then I think it is a great thing. The moment it starts to take over our lives and we start shirking those obligations, responsibilities, and interactions, that is the time we have to take stock and make adjustments.
But that is no different to anything in life, is it?