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
Social media is largely unregulated and unmoderated. This is why it is so terrible at times.
When everyone has the freedom to say anything, with little fear of it being moderated, then social media becomes a Wild West and is destructive.
Large and lucrative social media platforms will never spend the money required to make sure that disinformation isn't prevalent.
When the internet and mobile phones was first brought in to commonplace usage 40 years ago, questions were raised about who is being even allowed any access to these technologies back then, aside from the costs of obtaining the relevant equipment and some people had even devised a licence system back then to encourage responsible use - many decades later, aside from censorship, the proposed digital ID scheme appears to be fulfilling a similar purpose, yet with the added complication that so many people are now totally dependent on these technologies to live, in so many ways, but the current safeguards on social media are not sufficient