Scolded and judged
I don't know anyone who has genuinely changed their mind as a result of being scolded and judged.
I don't know anyone who has genuinely changed their mind as a result of being scolded and judged.
My biggest surprise in leaving social media has been just how little I miss it. Perhaps that's one of the lies it tells us, that we need it. We don't.
On social media, communication is not about learning. It's not about listening. It's certainly not about changing our minds. Instead, communication serves to score points, to show others how smart and how moral we are, to perform. It's no wonder we can't get along when we use it.
A keynote speaker once made an interesting observation that I hadn't previously considered. “The dirty little secret of social media,” she said, “is that people mainly use it to brag about themselves and only incidentally see what others are up to.”
I think she's right.
I believe that social media is making us profoundly antisocial, profoundly unhappy, and profoundly stupid. By using it, we are becoming ineffective, misinformed, and narrow-minded. I believe that we would be better off without social media or with a radically different form of it.
This micro-blog won't focus exclusively on social media. However, given that the service that powers it*, thoughts.page, offers a compelling alternative to the enchanting digital battlegrounds of Twitter and Facebook, it only seemed appropriate to share those thoughts first.
* This content has since been migrated to another platform. That said, I do still very much admire thoughts.page.
I believe that social media is the cigarette smoke of our time. Some day, our grandchildren will demand answers.
“You knew it was bad for you. Why did you keep doing it?”
(For whatever it's worth, I tweeted that sentiment in 2019, before it was cool to compare social media to cigarettes. Of course, I later deleted my account.)