Before you say it, I know. I am writing a blog post… about hating social media. Will this probably come back to bite me in the face at some point? Probably. But I’ll let future TJ worry about that. For now I just really need to write something and my gaming blog post just didn’t fulfil the craving.

I have been a firm believer that social media is a fantastic wonderful thing. Blogs, Chat systems, messaging services, facebook, tweets, and the list goes on. But as I realize the affects that these systems have had on my life and those around me, I really begin to question if finally this wonderful new toy has finally become tainted and corrupted… or was it always that way?

Personally I used to check facebook more than once a day. It was too easy on my iPhone to just see what other people were up to whenever I was bored. As time goes on, I am sick of people sharing stupid photos of sayings and trying to request me to play some silly game with them. Maybe I’m just a hater, but even just now I saw four of my friends share the same picture, all from different sources and all four of them from different parts of the world. The things that I would never have seen are now painted all over my facebook news feed as if it were really news. Meanwhile in the streets of Australia, bikies are shooting each other up, and elsewhere even worse things are happening such as death and oppression. News feed? Please.

Of course, everyone says if I don’t like it, then don’t use it. Fair enough. But these days, we all seem to have some unspoken social obligation to “keep in touch” and Facebook has managed to make stalking or being stalked socially acceptable. People have asked to add me who were never my friends, or people who just want to chat and even worse, people I never wanted to hear from again. Yay. 

But Twitter has actually brought news to a new level, I can get updates as they happen faster than any newspaper and most of the time, faster than the television news channels. The problem is Twitter is all about freedom of speech. Yeah, now I sound crazy don’t I? But freedom of speech is a great thing, when used in the right contexts. When Twitter was used to organise riots in England, I seriously believe that instead of saying “We are just a soapbox for people to stand on, the message is theirs.” I think they should have stepped up and helped the police, not guard their criminal users. 

Also social media has begun to show skewed views of events, such as arrests. Any video shot from a certain moment can paint anyone in a terrible light. The latest news article being about police brutality. A video of a cop pulling a guy from a car and punching him while making the arrest went viral. People were mad because of the police brutality. People have apparently forgotten that the driver was 14, there were 5-6 people in the car (I can’t remember the exact number, but it was definitely at capacity), people were drunk and or high in the vehicle, the car was stolen, the car was evading the police, the driver hit two pedestrians… but man, the police shot at the car, and punched a guy. Damn. I thought the lesson would be don’t break the f@&king law, but in today’s world the people protecting us are the bad guys. 

Also, Facebook builds self esteem as well as breaks it. Many friends and a good following on Facebook make you seemingly more popular than you are, giving people a narcissistic personality. They can now do no wrong (trust me, you still can). On the flip side, cyber bullying is more prevalent than ever as rumours spread faster than wildfire and with texting and facebook, young children are probably more at risk esteem wise than ever before. I went from the popular crowd to the unpopular crowd during my youth and I can tell you now that I’m damn lucky I made it through. It wasn’t easy and I can definitely understand the pressures kids will go through with these wonderful advancements in technology.

Is social media bad? No, in fact I believe quite the opposite. Social media is an incredible tool. Look at fundraising on Facebook or even Kickstarter. Kickstarter is an incredible use of not only social media but the internet. People can now privately invest in other people, one of the greatest uses of the internet I have found to date. This does a lot to keep my faith locked for the future, but if not governed correctly, social media could eventually run the risk of doing more harm than good.

Well that is the end of my rant for this fine Sunday, I would love to hear your comments either on here or via email, facebook or twitter (Ironic I know… *hangs head in shame*) Thanks for reading!