What's the point?

You know. I was doing a bit of exploring and I really couldn't help but wonder: What's the point?

What exactly is the point of social media if you're hardly going to use it? I mean there are social people sure, but it anti individuals makes up than half which is unhealthy. I mean why do people like that exist? Joining various social circles yet persist in watching from the shadow and justifying the hostile behavior? If you're going to be that Way, WHY JOIN IN THE FIRST PLACE?

I just feel that this simply makes no sense.

I agree. And I have to say that I do not exactly feel comfortable when there's a whole group of people with one person never even bothering to say anything, let alone READ anything. Like, why are you there? What purpose does having you around serve anyone? I don't like it. I do not like it one bit. It's suspicious and obnoxious.

I don't know.

As a social species, I guess it fulfills the need to at least see people talking and be around people in some manner. It also helps prevent you from living under a rock too, being informed and such by and through several channels. Though changing them as a person to become more engaged and social is on them. There's nothing you can do to force that.

Is a forum not just a watered down version of social media? :-?
In all seriousness though, I only have Facebook to keep in touch with my parents (outside of phone calls obviously, which she'll tell me "Did you check your facebook! I sent you the funniest cat video!")
And I have Snapchat because all the kiddos I have to work with answer to it 1000x faster than a text message (and they won't dare pick up a phone call).

I felt better the more I detached myself from social media. Same goes for the news - in fact that was one of my most uplifting moments in recent years. No longer reading day in day out about a world of other people's problems and focusing on the most deplorable aspects of humanity.

I guess it's quality over quantity. I found I added no end of "friends" on social but I only spoke to a handful. I mainly used Messenger as the sequel to MSN after Microsoft closed it down. But a lot of people don't use FB for Messenger. When I found out I could use Messenger without a FB account I deleted my Facebook account immediately.

I think online conversations can provide people with an undue sense of self confidence - similar to alcohol, people can become perverse, obnoxious or angry. When a conversation turns into a slanging match online the people involved quickly go down the rabbit hole. There's no way to convince someone to your way of thinking if you're trading insults, there's also no real way for anyone to "win" an argument, especially online.

Another pitfall I think is that the online world is a haven for people who might be timid or lack self confidence in real life. So they start acting differently online. This seems especially prevalent in the online gaming world and especially in RPG's where people will start to roleplay and pretend they're something that they're not.

I'm not sure if technology is really enhancing our lives socially. In some ways I think it's slowly eroding our humanity. Politeness is virtually non-existent. Everyone has an opinions on any given subject, even with no background knowledge.

I do wonder if we'll reach a tipping point. Social media seems to be making us content with the unexceptional. If you get enough likes or shares, whatever mundane task you see fit to broadcast to the world is somehow justified. It's an augmented reality of sorts I suppose.

The same goes for video games, TV shows and films - we seem to be utterly fixated upon and seemingly enslaved by the fictional. Maybe we'll get to a point where the majority begin to realise that our real lives have the potential to be far more interesting than the media we seem so heavily invested in.

The world around us is breathtaking in terms of size, depth and beauty and yet day in day out billions of us are fixated on a couple of inches of flat screen.

Priorities.

Tifa

I consider myself to have been abandoned by my best friend, whom I've known for 32 years, all due to social media. Once he started using facebook, things changed.. Some family members have done this too. I basically just use it to keep in contact with my mom. I guess it gives people a false sense of being famous, with all those likes and 10,000 shared postings.