Social media started off so innocently, as a way to connect with friends and family and like-minded individuals. There was Friendster, then Myspace, then Facebook (which now has over 3 billion users). Along came Twitter (now X, with about 600 million monthly active users). There’s Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok. There’s even a YouTube-Twitter-Facebook spinoff exclusively for politicians called YouTwitFace.
What is your view of social media today? Do you use it, avoid it, or something in between?
I jumped on late, used FB and Twitter/X for a few years, then jumped off early. Except for TKZ and a couple other blogs, I’m a social media hermit. Would I sell more books if I were on Insta, et.al.? Yes but the costs outlined below are too high.
It began as a tool to “connect” people, which sounds good on the surface. But at this point, I believe it has now disconnected whole generations that never learned to develop real human connections.
Then it became a tool for cowards and bullies. People could attack others w/o provocation and never suffer consequences for antisocial behavior. Lord of the Flies went on a global scale.
Then purveyors finally admitted it’s a tool to collect data for predatory marketing and other suspicious purposes. Recent developments in AI morphed it into a tool for criminals on an unprecedented scale.
It’s a tool and I am sick of being tooled.