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Social media is like water. Context matters.
If you drink unfiltered water from a stagnant pond, you just might also be drinking bacteria, viruses, and/or pollutants that could make you violently ill.
If you drink too much water too quickly, you could upset the electrolyte balance in your body and likewise become dangerously sick.
If you drink clean, safe water, you’re doing a good thing for your health.
I have seen examples of social media harming people, but I’ve also seen it make life easier for others by allowing them to connect with folks in similar situations, teaching them things about the world they didn’t already know, and providing hours of free entertainment.
Generally speaking, I shy away from arguments that try to paint social media into a corner. Who you follow and what they’re saying makes all of the difference in the world when deciding whether having a TikTok, Instagram or other account is the right choice for you.
I tend to avoid celebrities, influencers, and large corporations online. There are exceptions for accounts that genuinely provide valuable information like weather updates, sneak peeks at upcoming speculative fiction books, or new dairy-free recipes or products for me to try, of course, but I usually find average people to be more interesting and useful individuals to follow because they’re not trying to sell me things I don’t need or make clickbait content.
(Your lists of things you want to hear about on social media might be completely different from mine, of course, and that’s totally okay. Not every sort of content should or even can appeal to every single person out there There’s a lot of perfectly good content out there that isn’t appealing to me but would be ideal for sports fans, new parents, or joggers, for example).
Many of the people I interact with regularly on social media are friends and relatives. We use it to keep in touch with each other, and I close those apps glowing with joy and feeling like I’m all caught up on their lives.
Under these circumstances, I think using those sites is a wonderful way to keep in contact with loved ones who live far away or who might have health problems or work schedules that can make even short trips for an in-person visit hard.
Such a great response, Lydia, and I love your water analogy!
Thank you. 🙂
My analogy was going to be “a bit like whisky — fine in small doses but not good to make a habit off”. XD I wound up going a more thoughtful direction. Yours is much better!
Thanks, Stephen!
Very interesting analogy, and I agree: how you moderate your experience makes all the difference!
Thanks. 🙂
When the individual user *can* moderate per own experience, that’s good.
When, like X, social media adopt algorithms that ensure that we see about 25% content that we want to see, 25% corporate blather, and 50% commercial rubbish, those social media are dead.
Agreed. 🙂