Keep the social media away from my life
I built my facebook account in 2007. I decided to stop to use my facebook account recently. Logged out from my mobile app and my computer.
I still keep the ID to maintain facebook page. And try not to think about it in my office hours.
Why? I think everything goes to crazy with social media in my life.
It waste time to use social media
I attended an online course with Internet Society in the end of last year. They used the facebook group to talk about internet governance issues and the online discussions. Sometimes I was interrupted by messages or other notifications when I tried to answered the question.
At the end of this year, the online course restarts again. The mentor of the course decided to use their own message board to have the discussions. I found I can more concentrate on the answering the question and compose an article to the question.
I also found I can read some books and type an article or do my study more concentrate.
There’s nobody really care about what you are sharing. Some ‘friends’ are not true in your life.
I enjoyed to share the place I visited, restaurant, movie, coffee shop, my mood and feeling. I tagged my friends and checked at some good restaurants.
Then I realized that’s so stupid.
My friends were with me in the restaurant, sitting besides to me, talking to me. Who other else in the internet would like to care about whom were you with at that time?
Everyone’s busy with his / her life. While they are exhausted in their jobs or family, why should they care about who is enjoy a big meal with somebody they don’t know.
I have fewer followers in facebook, really few people want to follow my account. When I review those friend request, I am so confused. I don’t know them. I’ve never seen them. Why should I accept the friend request from a stranger?
I am not a celebrity. I have never thinker about to be famous or become an opinion leader of something.
Everyone can be an e-stalker by using social media
Have you ever thought about we may become a gossip to some strangers just because they don’t like us, or there’s nothing interesting in their life?
I try to stop talking about privacy or human rights. Because when we use a social media platforms, it means we decided to give up part of our privacy.
Everything we shared, even in only personal mode or friends mode, the system would record everything.
Photos, emotion, texts, location, birthday, who had interaction with us, social media platforms always mentioned we have some memories with them. Because of we use the platform free, and they need to make money, so they may sell our data or analysis our data and turns to cash to operate.
The most terrible thing is, somebody you don’t want to contact forever may search your public events, read it. They don’t need to send the friend request, but they can read your public events.
What we think really important to our life, might be a joke in their dinner table.
And some smart strangers may guess our all social network accounts in each platform. How terrible isn’t it?
Copycats are everywhere
I like Creative Commons, and love to share my photo and articles by Creative Common licenses. I believe every thought, every creation may inspire another new ideas to this world and make it better.
The beautiful imagination was at the beginning.
Then I found somebody copied my movie reviews and book reviews in their blogs or other publication. This is also happened in social media platform. I write some longer messages in the group or my personal timeline, then there will be some people copy that to be their reports. Some people make some paragraphs become one part of his / her article then publish it to traditional media, i.g., news papers, magazines. Some people would accuse you copy their thoughts.
Photos, articles, anything you shared publicity to the social media is very convenient to those copycats. They may copy some paragraphs and change some words, reorganized the sentences or phrases then declare those are their intellectual property.
Too many complaints, hate speech, harassment, rumors in social media
This is the worst usage of social media. I am not sure in other countries. There are some people would like to post something against their willing or want to laugh at somebody in Taiwan, they take the pictures or videos then upload to social media, or give negative unreasonable reviews and without fact fulness.
There was a mother riding her scooter with her daughter in last winter. That was a very cold and raining day. But the daughter just wore a dress without a jacket, and trembling. There was somebody in the car saw it and took the photo with the license number, then uploaded to a public group in social network. This photo was forwarded many times with negative messages. Some people accused the mother and said it must be a child abuse case. Some people found the address of the mother and daughter by searching the license number, some journalists wanted to have interviews with the mother. The social workers thought that was a child abuse case, and wanted to take the daughter away.
That was a harassment to a usual family. The truth is, the daughter didn’t want to wear a jacket and loved to wear the dress. So the mother wanted to let her daughter know how cold is outside and need to take the responsibility by herself. Maybe she is a serious and strict mother, but every accuse, interview interrupted her life and her family.
Some people in the metro system or public transportation would like to take somebody’s embarrassing photo and upload to the social media. Maybe both you and me looked those photos and laughed those photos before. But if you were the one in the photo, what do you feel when you see your sleeping photo forwarded to the whole internet?
Just want to take back the ownership by myself
I had left internet for a while, almost a week. I lived without internet, there’s no signal in that area, and I had many things to do and need to be concentrated.
But after I came back to the internet convenient world. I made a mistake about using the social media. I thought I can control myself and use it as a tool, but actually, I was controlled by the social media.
I still keep my account alive, not really deactivated it. But I won’t click ‘Like’ or response any message through facebook messenger. I want to keep it far away from my life.
I still use twitter, medium, blogspot to have some interaction related my study and research. I still use Telegram, Google Hangout, WhatsAPP to connect with some friends. I also publish some photos in instagram, flickr, pixabay or unsplash.
I don’t think it’s meaningful from a stranger’s clicking ‘Like’. That might be, ok, I know it, I read it already.
I try to not addicted in another social media, I just read the news, take some notes in my notebook, or bookmarked it. Then close the tab. Using a Kindle or other ebook reader without internet connection. Then I won’t be interrupted by any message or notification. I can read a book quietly, concentrate on the online meeting, think about my slides and reports.
The most important thing is, I can sleep more, and won’t to read others murmur, complaints before my bedtime.
I believe there are more people know how to use social media effectively and control by themselves, not addict in it. But to me, I need to take a rest and leave far from it.
