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Is Social Media a Cry for Help?
2009 November 13
Social media is an odd thing. Well, to be more precise how we use Twitter and other microblogging platforms is odd.
Have you ever stopped to think about how much inane crap we pump out everyday. Every little detail of some peoples lives are shared for the world to see without a jot of thought spared for decency, privacy or the simple considerations of T.M.I (too much information) or “who gives a crap?”.
Yet we continue to pump this digital diarrhea out into the ether in hopes making some sort of a connection in this, perhaps, over connected world.
Have you ever wondered how people from a time before the interent would react to concept of a service like Twitter? Wondered what they would think of us today as we tweet about our latest bowel movement instead of actually doing something productive.
I’m thinking about that tonight because of the picture below, which I unfortunately have no source to credit.
Have we lost our collective minds?
We spend all day online looking for a connection to others, or pimping ourselves and our “brand” while the people that we really need to be talking to, meeting and connecting with, are in our homes and passing by on the street right outside our front doors?
Is the popularity of social media an addiction or a massive cry for help?
Is it a long drawn out wail in the night at the despair and depression at the increasingly lonely and isolated lives people lead in this ever more digitally connected world? A world where we are pseudo friends with everyone but know nobody. A world where we talk to 100′s of people a day but connect with no one.
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“No offense, Future Man, but is everyone in your time retarded?”
Haha, golden. My parents say something like that to me every time I talk about blogging and Twitter. Heck, I think it myself on most days …
Yes, I find it amazing that even though we have the ability to “connect” with anyone at almost anytime, there is still loneliness in the world, especially in the most advanced and technologically connected countries. In my blog post: http://faven.net/blog/?p=7, I have advocated that social media should always be a “springboard for offline activity. Never should the virtual world be a permanent retreat from or a replacement for the real world.”
Here is a link to a remarkable story in one of my favorite magazines, Adbusters, about this exact issue: https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/86/private-worlds.html.
Thanks!