Crap . . . another blog post about social media

Have you ever noticed how hard it is to explain the term #hashtag to someone who isn’t familiar with social media? That’s what I got to thinking about today as I was reading through another blog post about social media and how it’s ruining everything and destroying life as we know it. At least that is if you read the internet at all. And I’m betting you do because you’re here reading this now. And you probably got here from a link posted on social media.

There are a lot of people that are speaking out against social media and its effects on society. They raise issues from it impacting the way we think to it creating a false sense of personal relationships. They are claiming that the massive influx of information sharing is changing us.

They’re right.

The problem is that they are arguing that what is happening is bad. Like catastrophic bad. That’s the basic problem. As a people, we are constantly changing. It’s what we do. We’ve always done it. It’s what we are really good at. Just because this something new has acted as a catalyst to initiate a shift in how we operate doesn’t mean that the world is about to end.

Look. People generally have the idea that society is degrading. That everything is changing in a way that is mostly negative. But people have always thought that way. Always always. I’m sure that there was someone’s mother in ancient Egypt exclaiming that the new form of writing on papyrus was ruining everything. And maybe it was, or at least, changing the way things worked up until that happened. But that’s my point. Everybody generally thinks that the time they live in is a little less perfect than the time that went before. That’s because change is scary. But things aren’t getting worse, they are just getting different.

The creation of the internet has happened at an alarmingly fast pace. Social Media, even more recently. And it’s powerful. It’s a new type of community. It is infinitely flexible and customizable. We are moving from isolated ones to networked ones. The time is coming very soon (for some it is already here) that the relevance of the people we know online is as weighty as the community we live in. Professional relationships, friendships, interest groups,

Is there a lot of worthless chatter? Sure. But there’s worthless chatter in line at the gas station and in the hallways at work. There’s no rule that says that if we put it on the internet it must be profound. But it can be. And if you show me something that makes me laugh or moves me I can take that object and share it with the people I know and we are all better for having experienced it.

That goes for knowledge too. I may be the only one in my institution working on something but online I have a network of people who can help and add insight to what I am building. That has value.

I’m not saying that social media is the best thing that has ever happened although I could argue that in my lifetime, it might be one of the most interesting things. But I can tell you that it isn’t ruining people, or the world, or our ability to think or talk or write. It is nothing more than something new. And while it might change some of those things, it will not ruin them. Human beings are extraordinary at adopting and adapting ourselves and the world around us in the most interesting and innovative ways given the chance.

There will always be people standing on the sidelines shouting that the sky is falling and soon no one will be able to think in more than 140 characters. I’m sure that they were shouting about the papyrus too.

Tags: edtech, facebook, google+, googleplus, social media, technology, twitter