Is Social Media Dooming Us?
By Jessica Bell
As a whole, we are consumed with tweets, statuses, instagram filters, and followers. It’s a way of life completely different from past generations. From the time we open our eyes, social media controls our focus. Networking, advertisement, quick access to breaking news, and simple contact with the important people in a persons life are the obvious upsides. But at what cost?
To start, what about a constant need for validation? People post pictures of themselves only showcasing their best features with heavy editing placed over the original photo. Not only is this misleading, it’s confusing to people who might not know them in real life. Besides this, tweets/statuses are made only giving a thinly veiled look into the lives of others. The thoughts and events shared are often only the very positive things going on in a persons life, never the bad. The worthiness of the content shared is valued through the amount of likes ,shares, or retweets it receives.
As a society, we are also forgetting how to communicate properly. We stand as a society so caught up with technology, we simply can’t be bothered to pick up the phone. With such a lack of face to face communication, it makes spending time together almost scary. Forget solving an issue through actual discussion. Instead, we oftentimes make passive aggressive comments about one another. The younger generation is one afraid of conflict or confrontation.
Furthermore, dating is also increasingly difficult. Such a constant need for attention paired with our apparent issue with talking directly is setting us up for failure and loneliness. Not only will we ignore issues at hand, but we will also seek comfort in the fact that we have so many options. Social media directly links us to the attention of prospective partners by the hundreds.
To be honest, I love technology and I’m guilty of being victim to it. Yes, like most of us, sometimes I can be absorbed by it. Yet, I can’t help but to wonder how different everyone would feel if we overcame all of the issues social media and technology place upon us. If instead of being enveloped in the comfort our advancements have given us, we lived a life worth bragging about online.