Social Media

Social Media: The future or an overused substitute to interaction?

Every day we are bombarded by everything from Tweets, to Facebook updates, Youtube comments and yes, blogs like I am writing now. Social media has become a force that has been used everywhere in the world and has made it easier to communicate and transmit information than ever before. Facebook and Twitter helped launch revolutions in the Middle East and ultimately was the choice for organizing protests. Here in the US they have been tools for change such as the Occupy movement as well as various hot topic issues plaguing the US. Now these are all great things that social media has done and shows the capability to truly utilize its potential.
However, there is a flip side to all of this. Recent studies by psychologist point out that this generation, the one raised on social media are already displaying much more narcissistic behavior then those before. Let us be honest with ourselves, how many of your friends on Facebook do you interact with regularly? Probably not as many that is on your friends list. This can cause some serious problems, particularly for young people. For the most part people have interacted with those they were close too and shared personal things with only those who they trusted. This is not the case though anymore, especially in the age of social media.
It is not uncommon to log on to your social media of choice and see personal information revealed by someone you probably have not interacted with face to face for the last year. The same goes for you, people feel like they need to reveal much more than ever before. Things that should be kept to themselves are now being shared to everyone with an internet connection. This may not seem like a big deal but the internet is becoming a place to share any thought and the difference between that and a diary is that the internet is permanent. Whatever you put in a tweet or on a wall post gets archived and now will forever be on the internet.
Finally social interaction has declined. People now associate mainly online, through Facebook or Twitter. What happened to actually calling someone to set up a friendly game of soccer? Now it is mass spam invites. The personal touch that is important in building lifelong friendships is being lost. People no longer see a need to make an effort for personal interaction because they have hundreds or thousands of “friends” or “followers.” A human interaction is one of the most important things that a person can have. Of course I am not saying we no longer interact, rather that social media has turned interactions into something else. Where the future of social media will take us, I am not sure, but it will be one interesting path along the way.

I invite you to comment and share your thoughts!

Thank you!