Social Media

Social media is pervasive in our current culture.  Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc are all examples of ways people have to communicate with thousands of others asynchronously.  Rare is the person today who doesn't have some kind of social media account.

Social media has the power to change the world.  The first chapter in Here Comes Everybody shows the influence that social media and networks can have to affect things outside of the social sphere.  The LDS church uses social media to connect investigators with members, to help people understand their goals, and to correct misconceptions and misinformation about the church.  There are many great things that this kind of interaction can bring about in the world.

Unfortunately, these days most of the information that passes through social networks is worthless.  Posts about what someone ate for breakfast or a not-funny joke their boyfriend told that day simply dilute the power and effectiveness of social media.  Perhaps this information is important to the person that posted it, and it has become so pervasive that others accept these kinds of posts, but in truth most of the audience simply doesn't care.

A few years ago I started a twitter account because I was told that it was "necessary in this field" about programming.  I followed several high-profile accounts of professional, well-known programmers, hoping that this would provide me with good insight on programming topics and expose me to opinions I might not have been able to find on my own.  While this did occasionally occur, the majority of the posts were something akin to "went to the dentist today".  Because of the mass of unrelated, unimportant posts, I quickly stopped following twitter and abandoned it altogether.

Social media is a useful, important tool in our society.  Unfortunately, as with many things, it has been misused the point where it is largely ineffective and useless.  Many people talk about the power of social media, and I can see the potential, but until people use it for real communication rather than pointless fluff, it will be an exercise in futility to attempt to find any real meaning in it.