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.
I only scroll Instagram for the funny cat videos. FB is worthless – my feed is filled with people I don’t know and pages I never signed up for. X is too mean. The only thing I spend time on is Pinterest, which isn’t a true social media app, it’s a search engine.
My 21 year old granddaughter regularly talks about how social media has made regular conversation between men and women almost nonexistent.
Except for TKZ, I don’t go to any social media sites. My main writing computer is off-line. My husband spends a lot of time on Facebook and YouTube and honestly, I don’t know how good people can stand the vitriol. I do enjoy the funny stuff he shares; maybe I should give YouTwitFace a try. 😄
We pick our grandchildren up from school and they don’t even look up from their phones. It makes me wonder how they have time for schoolwork.