A Problem with Social Media

As social media grows to be much more of a norm for a large portion of how we interact with people, several problems arise.  And these are going to become more and more relevant as social media grows.  And this is platform independent.  It doesn't matter if you are using Facebook, Twitter, or my preference, Google+.  What are these problems?  You'l have to click the link to find out...


The biggest issue became apparent back when the text message became so popular.  Interaction via text message takes all vocal tones out of it.  It made it possible to say something that you would never say in person to someone.  We had to begin typing that we shrugged out shoulders rather then just doing it.  But beyond that, you could say you did even if you didn't.  How many times did you wonder what someone meant when you were right in front of them or talking on the phone?  Probably not nearly as often as you have via text message.  However, with text messages, you generally knew the person you were messaging with.  So often you could guess what they were feeling or what they meant by their phrasing.

Move to the next level of social media (yes, I consider texting a form of social media) and it gets even more abstract.  I'm talking Facebook now.  For the most part, people use Facebook to interact with people they know, family and friends.  But it usually extends beyond just siblings, aunts and uncles, and cousins.  It normally goes beyond that with family, the second and third cousins, blah, blah, blah.  In the last few years, it's expanded to include friends of family and friends of friends.  This means you don't necessarily know these people closely like you did with those that you text messaged.  Which means you now lose the knowledge of being able to know what they mean based on phrasing.  And that can cause a lot of misunderstandings.  It takes way too long to express things when you have to type them out and often it isn't easy.  But they are usually someone you know so you can forgive, sometimes.

Now let's move to something that obscures it even more, Twitter.  This platform has really gotten people interacting with people that they don't know.  And it's expanded on the issues that texting began and Facebook expanded.  You may have a few family or friends that you follow but it quickly expands to celebrities and people with similar interests such as sports or political views.  And the interaction is even more restricted because you are limited (as with text messages) in the number of characters that you can use.  You generally know little or nothing about those that you are interacting with.  Top that off with a very odd interface that makes it easy to lose the complete conversation.  They've done some things to fix that but the underlying issue is still there, you can't see them or hear their tone of voice.

And the latest player to join in the foray is Google+.  This is really a mix between Facebook and Twitter in that you often don't necessarily know the person that you are interacting with.  When Google first opened the platform to the public, many people said that it wasn't a network to interact with family and friends but rather it was a platform to interact with people that had common interests.  And for the most part, that dominates the way that people interact, at least that I've seen.  So, once again, you have the issues with all of the previous forms of social media.

This all leads to a base issue that I see with the direction that the world is heading.  With social media being almost a primary way of communicating with people, there are many taking advantage of it.  And by that I mean people hiding behind some kind of facade.  There are the creeps that just want to find someone to brag to regarding their physique or take advantage of people, but those aren't the people I'm taking about.  I'm talking about the people that just aren't the type of person or personality they pretend to be.  Again, I'm not referring to the predatory people.  I'm talking about those that pretend to be your friend, sometimes for a long time, then suddenly you catch them acting or saying something completely different.  It's very easy with social media for someone to do this because you can't see them and you don't know them.  That is until you catch them.  And when you do catch them, they block you and move on to the next.  It causes those that are trusting to get hurt quite often and it'll eventually really cause issues in society.

So here's why I have a problem.  I'm a real person, I post things that interest me or make me laugh.  I'm not one of those fake people that will say what I think you want to hear so that you will like me.  I don't care if you like me or not.  I am who I am (though I don't eat canned spinach).  There is only one thing that I use social media to hide.  I'm an introvert and social media allows me to act a little like an extrovert.  Not a complete extrovert, but how I act around family and friends where I'm comfortable.  So if I say something, I believe in it.  If you want to follow me on Google+, I'm fine with it.  Just understand that I'm not one that is impressed with a huge number of followers or the number of people that I follow so I may not return the following.

So I challenge you to look through your friends on Facebook, those that you are following on Twitter, and your circles on Google+.  How many of those people do you know personally?  How many of them do you know are genuine as to who they are?  Be honest with yourself with the evaluation.  I'll bet there aren't as many as you initially thought.  And let's start pointing out those that are not who they are pretending to be.