Social Media has its pros and cons like anything, some of the pros are being able to keep in contact with people from the comfort of your home or elsewhere and being able to post insight in one’s life and to share parts of your life story to your friends and family all at once with ease and without hassle. But at the same time there is often a lot of toxicity and bias mixed in with social media and its prevalence can make it hard to root out from the rest.
Just as how a mob mentality can exist out in the real world when people are widely unhappy about something, it is even more common for such mobs to exist on social media as the ease of organising and coming together on it is much simpler and consequences from actions are less punishing or responsive. Feeling bullied online is still extremely common, especially from accounts that are anonymous.
Echo chambers are also extremely common, once one side of a political spectrum or of a certain opinion bubble takes up residence, it can be extremely difficult for difference of opinion to penetrate it without them being widely harassed or, given the influence and control, kicked out or buried. Debate is often toxic rather than constructive and fair, and ad-hominem and straw-maning and various other unfaithful methods are incredibly common.
Debating under managed conditions can be a fun experience which cannot really be found on social media and yet people often get themselves into it anyway as it is hard to avoid, one can easily find themselves dragged into a toxic debate that is impossible to win either due to aforementioned unfaithful debating methods, the prevalence of warped information on the internet and other users that are likely to also pile in on the debate, leading to a hopeless and pointless situation that nobody truly wins, but that everyone will come away acting like they won nonetheless.
In most online debates no one is moved in either direction and everyone maintains they are correct or that they were the most effective in the debate, despite having only anecdotal evidence at best, if even that. Such debating can really end up taking a toll on someone’s mental health and emotions, either making them depressed, angry or stressed and of which again just isn’t worth it.
Most often on social media it is highly politically charged and the good things are buried by the bad or frustrating things, just as how it often is in the news media. People will often come on to Twitter for example and observe the hashtags, many of which are highly divisive and sensitive topics that can cause a wide range of negative emotions and mob mentality with no beneficial effects whatsoever.
But social media is also damaging and biased away from politics to. It can give a false sense of a perfect life to those who feel bad about themselves. For example, someone who doesn’t exactly feel confident with their lives may often see their friends on social media going to fancy places, hanging out with cool people, getting a house or a new car, having a great time with the seemingly perfect man or woman and will then try and apply those things into their own lives and believe that they are on the wrong path.
Seeing such stuff on social media causes depression in many people. But people need to understand that in this sense social media is biased, people will obviously only post about things they are either highly passionate about, have a strong opinion on or about things in their life they are happy with. Most people don’t post about the mundane activities of life that are the most common or about most of the negativities they have faced in life, many will keep that stuff locked away and only post about the things they are enjoying, making it look like they have the perfect life chock full on fun and excitement.
If everyone were to be more truthful about their lives on social media, then the majority will find that the issues they have in life aren’t so dissimilar from one another and that everyone has their own problems and emotional periods, despite what may be seen posted on social media, these people are only posting what they want you to see and not what they are personally ashamed of or bothered by in life, in most cases.
Everyone has bad times, everyone has good times, just because one does not notice them or see them or only notices one side, doesn’t mean the other doesn’t exist. Too much time on social media is unhealthy and it is important for people to get away from it when they can, focus on their hobbies and jobs and not try and apply a one-sided bias they have observed to their own life.
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