Social media is one of the most effective ways to communicate with selected or targeted groups, including locals, or folks with niche hobbies. NextDoor and many of the hyper-specialized FB groups are wonderful for that, and as someone who’s trying to launch a small home-based business, that’s important to me.
Social media is just the vehicle. As with actual “vehicles,” the problems typically revolve around the driver (users). Social media just gives miscreants a tool with which to do their online antics.
Zuckerberg is presently considering how he might manage Facebook in a DMV-derived business model.
How soon we forget. (pdf)
The Atlantic usually has good content, that article was pure garbage. I’m sure it was recycled from a 1980’s article about video games ruining people or perhaps a 1990s article about AOL ruining people. Social media can be an excellent tool, it can also be full of garbage. For me, it’s a net good.
We’d all best agree to disagree but before leaving the thread let me add:
(1) For a mature adult to refute with “social media is on-balance a plus for me” is to miss, astonishingly miss, the whole point of the Atlantic article which was specific to impressionable youth.
(2) I wonder what those who think that Atlantic article is too dystopic would think of “How America lost its mind”.
Strangely enough, a similar topic came up just today on Full Frontal Nerdity
Better without? For adults, no, social media are almost indispensable now. But for kids the picture is murkier. I can’t imagine the pressure that kids are under, they live or die (literally in some cases) by the gauge of social media, especially as weaponized by bullies. So I do think that young kids would be better off without. An age restriction of 21 would be good although probably impractical as it would be almost impossible to enforce.
I really don’t think this is true. Remove all social media tomorrow and I don’t see a huge problem. There are clearly a good few adults on this thread that manage perfectly well without it. Me included and I’m pretty cutting edge in most technological respects.
I don’t think so. In any case this is the only message board that I post to, the only fleeting glimmer of “social media” even allowing for that rather nebulous definition and as interesting as it can be sometimes if it ended tomorrow it would not impact me one jot, I wouldn’t go looking for anything to replace it.
So my point stands, I’d manage perfectly well without any social media at all.
I suppose that technically I’ve been friended by one or two people here, but I have no idea what that means or what purpose it’s supposed to serve.
But in any case I could very easily stop posting here and be fine - the dope and other message boards and comment sections are hardly ‘indispensable’ to me.