People who use Social Media Aren’t Ridiculous

I don’t believe that social media is for ridiculous people (I refuse to use the word idiot — see the footnotes for why.)I think that it is often needed in today’s world for people to connect to each other, functioning in much the same way as letters used to. In this respect I don’t see why some view the world as being worse-off when all communication is communication. Both letters and social media get information across, just in a different way. In this respect, does it really matter HOW information is got across? Surely the transmission of information is more important than its medium? In addition to this, I, as a prospective writer, was told to get a Twitter account to communicate and connect with people. I was told that this would me connections. As such, if one doesn’t have a social media account thy could miss these and lose out on important and useful things. Thus they may have to work harder than someone with an account as they would have to go through alternate channels — and these would likely be more lengthly. It would also mean that they could miss out on news as they wouldn’t be having it pumped into a Twitter account or a Facebook feed.

However, while people who use social media aren’t all awful, and while social media isn’t intrinsically bad, it certainly has its unpleasant side. Harassment is rife on Twitter and every week it seems as if there is a new data breach on Facebook. So obviously social media has issues — yet these aren’t issues about the idea of social media, they’re issues with how it’s run and with people on it. And nasty people are always around. You could build the nicest platform ever and nasty people would always be around. Of course, these problems should be nipped in the bud quicker than they are right now and reports should be taken more seriously. However, I won’t say that people are silly for having social media accounts as this would be blaming them for the difficulties that they encounter whilst using them. This would be wrong as people, obviously don’t ask to be harassed. Unless, of course, they’re trolls and, as such, looking for a reaction.

On a less analytical level, I feel that it’s rude to insult people who have social media accounts. After all, you would be insulting a lot of people! Also, would you also include sites, like LinkedIn, that have a more professional bent? After all, from what I’ve heard, LinkedIn is pretty much required now. As such, people are often forced to use a social media account even if they refuse to use any other type of social media. Also, people use social media for different things — some people use it to keep in touch with family and friends that they can’t see face-to-face. And it could be incredibly mean for me to attack people who, otherwise, wont be able to see their loved ones and some people just want people to see their cute cats, and what’s so wrong with that?

Footnotes
Going by the lecture slides this piece was meant to be titled Social Media is for Idiots, but I don’t like using this word as it’s disablist — https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/disablist
See also this — https://thebodyisnotanapology.com/magazine/stupid-is-an-ableist-slur-breaking-down-defenses-around-ableist-language-liberating-our-words/
I thus amended the title slightly.
67% of people who reported to Women, Action and Media (WAM!)mentioned that they had reported their harassment at least once before. https://www.cjr.org/analysis/twitter_harassment_by_the_numbers.php
Anita Sarkeesian totalled 157 of examples of misogyny, gendered insults, victim blaming, incitement to suicide, and rape and death threats she’d six-days on Twitter — https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/charliewarzel/a-honeypot-for-assholes-inside-twitters-10-year-failure-to-s