Published on 12, July, 2020
Discussion topic for today - Social Media. I would be interested to hear people's thoughts on this. I believe social media has destroyed the fabric of civilisation. We have lost the ability to "agree to disagree" and to tolerate opinions and beliefs contrary to our own, screeching names and insults at anyone who disagrees with us and calling for them to be cancelled.
We have become extraordinarily self obsessed and narcissistic, endlessly taking photos of ourselves and posting our every thought to the world. Most of all though I believe we have become incredibly unhappy and unable to experience real life. Most people I see are far more interested in filming and posting their lives to curate a perfect online profile of themselves than in actually living those wonderful moments that make life worth while. For instance, if you see a beautiful sunset is your first instinct to stand there and contemplate its wonder or to post a picture of it online? There's lots more that could be said on this discussion, especially the effect on young people.
Would be interested to hear everyone's opinions
Apart from here I don't use it and never have, it's just not something that appeals to me.
I did notice that the inability to agree to disagree seemed to start when the Brexit referendum was announced, it also seemed to split ages groups too, with young people being picked on for wanting to "vote the wrong way", i.e they were more pro European than older people.
I think there has always been a well of nastiness swirling around the human psyche, I once looked at medieval local manorial court records and the things that people complained and dobbed in thier neighbours for was simialr in pettyness, nosiness and bullying as we see on social media today. Police have always had to screen the mail of families who's children have gone missing or had fatal accidents, because of nasty letters.
I wonder why people bother going places when all they do is film it on their phones, if I paid mega bucks to go to Glastonbury or somethig I wouldn't want to spend my time filming on my phone, I'd want to be in the thick of it enjoying every momment. But then the Japanese have done this for years, long before social media, they would turn up somewhere, pile out of a coach, photograph everything in sight and pile back on the coach to be whisked away to the next photo opportunity. I guess it's part of a changing culture, but it seems that there's a growing number of young people who are turning away from social media.
I do wonder if there will end with people who do social media and all the tech stuff and those who don't, or who only use it to do things like buy train tickets and stuff like that?
Where social media is concerned, the inability to agree to disagree started long before Brexit. I feel you should consider yourself lucky that social media has never appealed to you, as I believe you would absolutely hate it with a passion.
Yes, I too have heard that many young people are turning their backs on social media. I guess that only time will tell if it's a trend that will continue.
It goes even further back, to the advent of mobile phones and to the start of computers in secondary schools in the 1980’s, even to landline phones by U.K. council tenants in council houses, even when not connected to the old dialup internet - our grandparents generation, having already been totally opposed to both the TV and everything else, went to great lengths to oppose computers in schools, to us kids learning anything about computer science, etc and they went to the parish priests and the local police in Rural Ireland to put a stop to all of these things - it was only decades after their passing did we finally realise that their instincts were correct all along and their warnings and predictions turned out to be true in our times - we really do have to wonder about the true motivations of those who pushed this onto us, supposedly without restriction (aside from the setup and other costs) and where restrictions and censorship only came in much later on, as it later emerged that the elites don’t allow their children any access to these at all below the age of 21 and this includes the children of royal families - even adult members of the British royal family, even when they have mobile phones or internet, it is highly restricted
It’s a sign that young people are getting sense because they are coming under the right influences demonstrated by their ditching of social media in increasing numbers
Sporadic Sparkly said:Yes, I too have heard that many young people are turning their backs on social media
I hope they are. I used to be a teacher and the scale of the addiction to social media among my students was mindblowing. I once asked a Year 10 class to write down honestly the amount of hours on a non school day that they thought they spent on their phones. The average answer was 11