technology
culture
Was the web a better place before social media?
The Saturday Evening Post
Sonya Supposedly
0
0
Genesis
Response
Penultimate
Finale
April 10th, 2021
I guess the first thing we should do is define what "social media" is. This is sometimes a controversial point, because the definition depends on how long you've been using the web.
Web sites aren't social media, and neither are blogs. YouTube isn't social media, comment sections aren't social media, and I don't think forums are social media either. If we start calling those things social media then the term becomes meaningless because everything would be social media. The term "social media" should be reserved for places like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, the places you can post and reply and like and retweet and follow and message, that quick back and forth in the never-ending stream.
I've been online for 25 years and was one of the very first bloggers (I'm old). I used Twitter every single day for seven years and was on and off Facebook for a few years. I even did MySpace and Google+. At first I loved them (yes, there was a time when Twitter was pretty great!), but then they became distracting, irritating, and utterly exhausting. They're now places filled with nastiness, misinformation, cliques, stupidity, and non-stop self-promotion and congratulations/sucking up. Even the most innocuous post about a happy dog or your favorite snack can turn into a disagreement or misinterpretation.
I don't know why anyone subjects themselves to it every single day.
It might sound like a cliché, but after I quit social media I immediately felt a huge relief. I was less anxious, it felt great to not have to check something 30 times a day (I'm online enough already, thank you), and it was great to not have all that "stuff" coming at me all the time. We all need that mental breathing room. And when I quit I felt better about myself too, because I grew to dislike the social media me.
The reason I say the web was a better place before social media is because the web of the '90s through the mid-2000s or so was a very different thing. The real world was the default and people visited the web. Maybe they had their favorite sites and they checked their email and maybe shopped. Now it seems to me to be the other way around, or at the very least it's 50-50. People don't just visit Facebook and Twitter, they live on them. Everything begins and ends there. To millions, social media is the web. It's where they keep in touch with friends, where they get their news and information and political opinions, where they first see pictures of their baby nieces, and where they post pics of their blessed lives, incredible vacations, and flawless dinners. Every single thing gets viewed, filtered, and consumed through the social media lens.
That can't be healthy for anyone, day after day, year after year. Can it?
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