Wednesday, June 29, 2011

I Wish I Were "Liked" More

I have been wanting to write about this topic for some time now and it wasn't until today that I finally had a good reason to. Social Media is great don't get me wrong but it has some very large pitfalls that I think have the potential to put people on the wrong track, both temporarily and permanently.

Some personality types need the constant reassurance from "friends" to keep their self-esteem high enough to operate normally in life. This isn't always bad, like when you have people close to you and get to have the physical relationship as well as the emotional. This type of self-esteem building is natural and we as a human race have had many decades to get used to this sort of interaction, it's natural. With Social media however you don't get the physical part of the relationship. You don't get to read physical queues or see the look in someones eyes that often times scream out silently to you for help or understanding or even assuredness. I feel like we are losing this all together and although social media like Facebook and Twitter weren't the original offenders they are rapidly propelling us in that direction now.

This is important to me because I know people like this and have had the social media pleasure of being knocked aside in lieu of more self-esteem building opinions. This is especially disconcerting because this incident was with a person that I feel has only me to show her the opposite viewpoint giving them information that can be used in the decision making process. Years have gone by where I have been that person and sometimes my side of the coin has persuaded and sometime it hasn't but not until today has it been entirely rejected without a full hearing. This upset me a bit because I consider this person a good friend and would always listen to what they had to say.

So there is my soap box and I just wanted to get it out there. Social media is good but when used for the purpose of keeping in touch with people. Not, making decisions based on what your Facebook Friends think because most of them are just using social media to keep in touch with you and not as a decision making tool. They aren't placing value in what they are telling you. You can't place value on advice given in 140 characters or less.