The good, bad and ugly of social media

BLONDIE

Social media has made it so very easy to “follow” the actions, fortunes and other updates from someone – be it a company, an institution, an acquaintance, a faraway relative, or a close friend.

Now you can figure out how people are faring, what they are occupied with, what has happened recently with them, and more, without phone calls, e-mails and such. You just have to be on Facebook, MySpace, Google+, Pinterest, Flickr or Twitter with them.

ANGEL EYES

The flip side to this never-before continuity of contact is that you see the trivial side, the mundane updates and their own boredom at having little to say or show. Not many have the wisdom to be active on their social media accounts only when they are professionally or socially or personally busy. There are those who turn to it when they are out of ideas and simply trying to kill some time. Then they feel obliged in turn to show or share something, and their quite uninspired or shallow state shows through.

There is also an unsavoury aspect of social media – people who should not show a prying interest show their tendency to comment or butt in where they ought to proceed with more caution. Platforms such as Facebook can create a false sense of intimacy – the fact is that we do not know the people we meet daily at work or in our neighbourhoods well enough, and to presume that we really understand the bare acquaintances who have connected with us on Facebook is a folly.

TUCO

A platform such as FB gives you regular opportunities to view the interests of people around you – their ratings of popular culture like film music, albums and movies, new animation games, gadgets and the like. In the midst of all this and much political discussion (especially before and just after an election) too, etiquette frequently gets abandoned, and utter strangers (taking advantage of the distance between themselves) hurl invective at each other to the embarrassment of decent folk who have made only courteous statements on the same comment thread.

So that’s the good, the bad, and the ugly of social media. And it’s not at all hard to do just the good bit! To pass this message on, share this with your good friends on Linked-In, Facebook and so on.