Social media for non-influencers

 

I just read a blog post where author reflected about role of social media in our lives. It would be difficult to ascertain what all the time spent on social media would have turned out to be, and it seems everyone overrates the role of social media in our life. So, what if we came across 1 or 5 or 10 great guys on social media. By all probability, if we were not there on social media but went out spending the same time in society, we still would have met 10 other wonderful people. Although this could be true for many of us but not for all of us, due to various reasons.

I started on social media many years ago, as it evolved in India. I joined Orkut when it was the most popular social media platform and I was very popular there. Afterwards, I was on Facebook for many years and shared my writings, and poems as I had many likeminded people there. And later, on Twitter. I also spent huge time on social media, as it was designed to engage us and waste our time. Social media is designed to be additive and everyone ends up spending more time there than planned. By now, all its secrets are out, including how it causes dopamine cycle in our body. But during the initial days, nothing was very clear. Now I spend very less time on social media, but I often come across many people who are still spending a lot of time there.

By the end of her article, the author asked not to make social media part of our life, but just use it as a connection tool. It is very good idea. The author also reflects how our life would have been without social media. She thinks most of us won’t be missing much. It makes sense.

Everyone has their own set of experiences in life and social media experiences are also part of the same. In a few decades from now, perhaps social media would be seen very differently. It is possible that future generations would really wonder and laugh at the previous generations for how seriously they took social media in their lives, how much of personal information they shared, and how little they cared about privacy and confidentiality. The way artificial intelligence and other tools are evolving, which are sweeping the internet to make use of the data into useful information, the internet has become a den of thieves and frauds. Our future generations are very lucky that by their time, we already know about pros and cons of the internet and the related etiquettes. The first generation of users are always the guinea pigs for any new technology or business and bears the maximum brunt.

All said and done, I think it would be fair to say that after social media came, first we reaped its benefits and then paid the price. By now, we are aware of how dangerous it is, and why it is possible to not be on social media and still lead a life.

- Rahul