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Many years ago I had a friend with an addiction to gambling. I never knew the extent of his obsession until it was too late. As his addiction grew, he had borrowed money from me and later, I would find out, from several other people as well. Eventually his debts became so extensive that he stole money from his employer; a job that I had helped him get. It didn’t take long before he landed in jail and when he got out, he drove to the casino to try to recoup his losses and having made an already bad decision worse, he was ultimately found dead in his car. I never learned his cause of death, but many of us had our suspicions.
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This story of addiction and its unfortunate ending is playing out on a daily basis in our country. However, there is another form of addiction that involves a large number of people and it may even include you too. And that is the addiction to social media.
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I believe that social media in its purest form does good things, such as connecting family and friends. However, as is the case with human nature, social media has been manipulated to do so much more and this in turn has led to the damage of our beliefs, values and thinking.
What is it about social media that has shredded our ability to reason, remodeled our thoughts and in a sense refabricated our character? For starters it easy to access and simple to use. Even those with limited technical skills can learn to post. Once this skill is acquired the desire to just simply post begins to wane. However, the need to mindlessly scroll through other posts grows as does the need to create posts or tweets that reach a wider audience and obtain more likes.
In general, the messages posted to social media are simplistic in nature. They have to be given that current attention span is at best a few seconds to a minute. There are very few who are willing to read through something complex or long winded. Therefore, posts need to grab your attention, pull you into a particular viewpoint and if you remain attentive you begin to realize that negativity is much easier to spread than something positive.
Once an adverse line of thinking snares its victim, the addiction begins. Minds are molded the way an athlete shapes their body to meet the demands of their sport. The impulse to seek out more information grows, because the current material can only feed the addicted mind so much.
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Now that the person has been hooked it’s easy to seek out likeminded people. Anger and dissent develop when information is posted that go against your belief. The desire is to create more posts that reflect your thoughts and belittle, whether subtly or blatantly, someone else’s views. In its extreme form, a need arises that incites physical action, confrontation and ultimately destruction.
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Does this mean that social media should be removed from our culture? Do we as a society need to step away? My answer is not at all. We are the co-creators of our reality and sometimes we need to step back and analyze if what we are creating is a true reflection of the person we want to be. Are we allowing ourselves to become consumed by someone else’s negative thinking and thus pulled from the path of our true character?
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To be honest my use of social media, in some small way, is for you to find my writing enjoyable and in turn read one of my books. Yet, it’s also my hope that I can get you to reflect on your life, understand the person you want to become, encourage you to find ways to be optimistic and in turn uplift others. It’s easy to hide behind a computer and create negativity that incites and belittles. It’s a lot harder to show decency and respect. In the end the choice and responsibility is yours and yours alone; it’s you who creates the image that represents the person you wish to be.
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I still believe that the majority of us want to be in this together, let’s not be too close together while we’re all in it.