How social media has increased the variety of people publicly sharing their opinions
The internet is the new frontier—a new Wild West, if you will—and it is full of people wanting to carve out a space of their own in the vastness of cyberspace. This World Wide Web is indeed worldwide; people are free to do what they want, with consequences just recently catching up to crimes committed. Businesses thrive, marketing becomes bigger, and nestled somewhere in the midst of it all is the thing that drives people in droves to go online—social media. There was MySpace. We have Twitter and the behemoth called Facebook. There are forums like Tumblr and Reddit, to name a few. The internet has become a space for people to share their thoughts at a moment’s notice, more often than not, in 140 characters or less. People can share links, articles, blogs, news reports, photos, videos, and all manner of things that can be uploaded, and likewise, people click on the Like button and make comments about anything and everything under the sun.
If there is a question, people can just go on Google to search or on Wikipedia to learn more. People can communicate through different email services and on instant-messaging accounts like Facebook Messenger, Viber, and Whatsapp, to name a few. Even China and South Korea have their own versions of a search engine, and no wonder, as communicating online is faster than any form of communication possible.
But can social media be considered magic, or is it a monster? There are so many pros and cons. On one hand, social media links the world together. Someone from Madagascar can post an opinion in the public sphere, and people from India, Malaysia, Uganda, and France can comment on it. However, that in itself is another problem. People can post anything without regulation or even thought for the repercussions. Someone from the United States can type on his Facebook status page something insulting about another country and its people, which can lead into a huge online fight that fans the flames of racism and discrimination. Going back to the Wild West analogy, this is when someone shoots a gun indiscriminately and hits someone who can shoot back. It is an imaginary public square with people just letting themselves type their thoughts without fear of physical retribution. Some kids have bullied other teens into ending their lives, but at the same time, many people on other platforms have saved lives by creating campaigns on Kickstarter or even messages of encouragement to others far away.
Social media and the internet are very recent additions to the social lives of human beings. It’s very interesting to see how these interactions turn out, but for now we can only watch and see how this technology unfolds and if they can improve humanity or not in the long run.
It’s very interesting to discuss these things, so feel free to write your comments below and tell me what you think of social media and the internet. You can also sent me a tweet @ByronSThomas.