Facebook is facing obsolesence.
The Twitterverse is all atwitter.
Time is running out for Tik-Tok.
I could go on but I won’t.
Social Media is part of our information ecosystem. Many people my age eschew all of these platforms, saying that they don’t want to be involved in (waving their arms) “all that.” But it’s like your grandmother who never used the dishwasher because the dishes never got clean enough for her. Or Granny Walton who didn’t want to have a telephone in the house. You have friends (or maybe it’s you) who proudly state that they still have a flip phone – or maybe that they have no portable phone at all.
Social Media doesn’t seem essential to those who haven’t dipped their toe in the water. I have dipped more than my toe – I’ve done a deep dive and I’m here to tell you that you’re missing a lot if you’re not on Social Media.
Most of us grew up reading the daily newspaper and watching the Evening News on one of just a few television stations that were available to us. Limitations of column inches and broadcast time meant we received only a snapshot of the news. Today, the best journalism is happening on Social Media. Sometimes it’s just a link to the digital version of the newspaper or cable news program, but often it includes an extension of those snapshots. Excellent journalists are writing long-form analyses of events and then sharing them with us – often without charge.
If you want to know what’s happening in the world around you, Social Media is the place to be.
But you say, I don’t really want to know what’s going on around me. It’s too depressing, or it makes me too angry, or I’m too busy.
I get it.
But here’s what I say to that: by not engaging, you accept the status quo. Politics is the exercise of public morality. It’s the way values are demonstrated in the public sphere. A decision not to engage is a decision to let the morality of other people set the tone for your community, your country, and the world. Not liking what’s going on is the primary reason for engaging, not a reason for disengaging.
We don’t know what’s going to happen to Twitter. Elon Musk bought the platform because he has more money than God, and now he’s finding that his investment is shrinking before his eyes. The Chinese-owned platform Tik-Tok is being banned from the phones of government employees in some states, and Congress is also concerned that the platform may be a sophisticated mechanism for Chinese espionage. Facebook, the domain of old folks for years, is now experiencing a resurgence as people leave Twitter.
In the face of the problems with these platforms, new Social Media sites have emerged. One of the most successful at this point is PostNews, which is doing a decent job so far of vetting account holders in order to keep out the bots and trolls that poisoned Twitter.
You should give social media a try. If you’re worried about digital privacy, that ship has sailed. It’s really easy to know everyone’s business these days.
There is a way to dip your toe in the water without getting in over your head. Set up a free email account (Gmail, Yahoo, or others) that you don’t use for anything else. Use it to set up a social media account on one of the available platforms. Dig into it a bit and find people you want to learn from. Then sit back and watch things develop as you begin to interact with people. If you decide you don’t like it, delete the social media account and delete the email address you used to set up the account. You’re back where you started, but with more insight into the digital world that is evolving around you. Plus your grandchildren might begin to communicate with you.
I like being on FB because that's where my friends (old and new) are. I joined it because my daughter's friends were posting pictures of my grandchildren and I wanted to see them - she wasn't so good at that ;-) So where do I go? FB is also good for news commentary (Dan Rather, Amy Siskin, Heather Cox Richardson, Robert Reich) and fun stuff like Andy Borowitz, Humans of New York. Is PostNews the place to go? FB is my only social media. I hope it isn't going to be obsolete! Thanks for your blog! And happiest of holidays!
Excellent and timely. Merry Christmas, Karen.🎄🎄