Social media has benefits. I personally experience these every day, and you probably do too. Social media also has risks.
Today, social media enthusiasts aren’t just common, they’re a job title. Technology has penetrated so quickly that our offline and online lives have merged inseparably. I know I can barely keep up with each latest tech development, let alone take time to ponder the risks.
But I do often wonder:
Are there times we should recommend more social media, and times we should recommend less?
We’ve all heard ad nauseum about internet and social media “addiction.” Other oft discussed detriments include slactivism, reputation destruction, declining productivity, loss of face to face interactions, and of course the end of personal privacy. These effects aren’t trivial, and are worth balanced consideration. But they are also sensationalized and can sometimes border on fear mongering toward the detriment of an open, social web. In any case, conversations around extremes are usually unproductive.
But this much is irrefutable: social, especially mobile social, media are increasingly invading all aspects of our lives. For good or bad, the psychological and social impacts of social technologies are real. I wish we understood more about these impacts. They relate to our health, to our every day well-being.
One hypothesis by author David Zweig suggests we are living in a time of increased self-consciousness to the point of depersonalization. He posits we are living in sort of semi-reality because of ubiquitous social media and mobile. Instead of living in the moment, he suggests we now experience life through filtered media, which can alter how we see ourselves.
The extreme of this: rather than enjoying any given moment–say playing with our kids, watching films, or even attending conferences–we constantly rehearse moments in our minds as tweets and Facebook posts. The events then become real or meaningful only once they’ve been shared online. This is total theorizing, but you have to admit there’s something to it, right?
Other compelling (though somewhat sinister) theories include suggestions that social media can induce envy and fear of missing out or, worse, reduce humanity to quantifiable numbers of influence.
Social media is not a drug. We will not be getting rounds of testing, clinical trials, and panels toward approval and a label that tells us all known risks and benefits. There won’t be any recalls.
It would be nice, though, to know for sure that the benefits outweigh the risks in most cases.
The common cure to counteract social media overexposure seems to be “unplugging,” where you purposefully disconnect for a few hours or days. When it’s a long period, the standard practice is to announce your offline plans to friends and family. I think most would agree that even by having this conversation (not to mention the need for a National Day of Unplugging), we are acknowledging some of the larger implications of social media’s impact on our lives.
My hope is that there’s some middle ground of mindful social media use, somewhere between mandatory unpluggings and near constant connection. If we got there (wherever that is – I really don’t know), maybe we wouldn’t need to forcibly unplug? Maybe there’s a way to co-exist with technology more peacefully?
Anyway, getting back to my original point:
As people who care both about others’ health and in the power of social media for good, are there situations professionally or otherwise when it’s more responsible to recommend less social media use, instead of encouraging more?
