Socialmedia is toxic

in #life8 years ago

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Hello everyone I got a question and a small little story for you all, I was browsing instagram and got really curious about how everyone is 24/7 on their phones living almost like a 2nd identity... so yea here is my post and would love everyone's thoughts about this matter even if its the smallest comment, why? Well yeah simply because i love discussions , they are fun and this matter is one of the most overlooked things nowadays imo.

Have any of you noticed how consuming social media actually is?

The way how social media creates a certain image of people and make others feel absolutely horrible and worthless.. However social media also has the power to grant one with influence and might. Note that whenever there is power there will always be some people who tend to abuse their power. There are certain instagram models who tend to do that (I wont name any names). But they will get men all lined up like puppies to make them pay for their expenses like it's their duty? Sure its their own fault for even getting tricked like that in the first place but still.. It sure is pitiful to see..

Thoughts?

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Welcome to Steemit. I am following. I wish you much success on the Steemit Board.

Thank you very much haha. You're my first follower so i'll give you a follow too

It goes both ways IMO. On the one hand you have communicating with people in real life which goes a long way for us dealing with our own personal psychology and our own sanity, but on the other hand we have this platform that's basically a massive communication channel for people all around the world, where they wouldn't have been able to communicate before. I think the potential is there to both bring people together and push them apart for both online and real life, this is still a very new thing the world is becoming accustomed to.

I wouldn't go so far as to say social media is toxic though, certainly there are people on it that can be like that but that doesn't make the entire platform the problem. Granted, there are downsides even if everyone got along, like you mentioned there is a very real possibility for increased anxiety or depression if we use it too much in the wrong way, or in the wrong frame of mind (and I believe it's surprisingly hard not to do so). I don't think that makes it a bad thing necessarily... I think it's at least a growing pain of the technology though.

I love how you said that its here to bring people together. Nowadays whenever i would ask this question you literally hear memes, funny videos, news etc. And yea maybe its too far fetched to call it toxic but lets just say that the dose makes the poison, right?

How do you think we should act upon said people that 'mistreat' the platform though?

Anything can be poison in high enough doses, that doesn't make it necessarily bad. Too much water will kill you, but we drink it every day. Too much social media could make you depressed or at least increase your anxiety, but it's still good in connecting people.

For people who mistreat or abuse a platform, I think we should act by not supporting them. We don't give them upvotes, we don't comment on their works, we silence them in chat if they're too toxic, etc. Basically peer pressure, let them know that this behavior is not ok and we will not put up with it. That's why social sites try to build in ways of reporting and dealing with abuse, like an upvote system or a hide option. But it's not perfect, and even the best of systems are prone to both false positives (abusers don't get flagged) and false negatives (innocent people are flagged), and that's where a lot of the "growing pains" I mentioned in my comment come from. Even YouTube is still experimenting with ways of dealing with this kind of thing, and you can see it every time a creator complains about the state of the system ("Is youtube over?", "my videos are demonetized!").

I think there's also possibly a little cognitive bias going on - we may latch on to the negative far easier than the positive, even if there's more positive present. If you saw 10 good posts about, say, gaming and all the positive experiences from it and 1 bad post along the lines of "EA is a corporate money hole don't buy from them!" which one might you remember better? Maybe both, but the bad post is more likely to stick in your head.

Like regular society, there are bullies. Online there are often a lack of measures in place to deal with them though.

The power we allow bullies or others influence us into submissions like those men... well that's our ignorance of how to live better that has us live in lower modalities of consciousness.

Dealing with those bullies nowadays is 'exposing' and other measures tbh. It might seem kind of low but its the same as in real life. You tell everyone what the bully has been doing to people and the bully will snap like a plastic knife.

Like most people say 'Ignorance is bliss' but this should really get exposure tbh.

You tell everyone what the bully has been doing to people and the bully will snap like a plastic knife.

Not on Steemit. I challenged some of the rich authority abusers of power on here, and they just kept going on removing the rewards from my posts that others allocated. The rich rulers on Steemit can act with impunity unless other rich rulers do something about it :P Don't expect any justice or anything here hehe.

Well damn.. makea this platform sound really bad tbh..

lol the image is great :)

haha just like your avy ;)

ps where is it from?

Haha Agree. When I was working in an office (way back when) the last thing I wanted when I got off was to see a computer or be on the phone! Cell phones were foldable at that time! Now I can’t even have dinner with my friends, as I get annoyed with them sitting there looking at their phones instead of holding a convo. We try to do a few hours each day at max * then...put it down! You’re not missing anything!

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