I am delighted I am no longer on social media, but I needed a platform to share my thoughts, positive ones, with the world. Blogging is the best way for me to express my thoughts without the worry of manipulation of social media platforms.
It has been almost eight years since I left Facebook, Twitter and I never was on Instagram. The only online presence I have is LinkedIn, supposed to be a professional networking platform, but it too is slowly turning into another Facebook. Of course, I am on Whatsapp and Telegram, belonging to only about six groups. Although I have read many articles classifying them as social media platforms, they are strictly messaging apps. Nevertheless, they too are conduits for spreading mis/disinformation.
On 16 July 2021, President Biden slammed Facebook for ‘killing people’ with vaccine misinformation. I completely agree with him. It is not just Facebook; all the other social media platforms also play a role, directly or indirectly, to propagate misinformation, disinformation, or fake news negatively impacting people’s lives. In fact, my Whatsapp status reads, “The most dangerous pandemic of this millennium is called SOCIAL MEDIA!!”.
When I started using social media actively in 2007, my feeling about the platforms was that they could act as a bridge to bring people together, world peace, accelerated information and knowledge sharing, entertainment, etc. It was, for a while, and the content and activities on these platforms became very negative, cyberbullying, fake news, fact manipulation, racism, the rise of weird and unnatural “cults,” cyber warfare/terrorism – I can go on and on about how negative social media has become.
Not to mention how these platforms collect your personal or private data and sell it to other parties who are interested. Read Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal. Remember, these social media companies provide these platforms for free, although there is no such thing as “free lunch.” So, why do they give the services for free? It is not entirely free. You pay by sharing your personal data. Data is precious, and they own petabytes of user’s personal data. So, if there is no product, you are the product.
My advice to everyone reading this is, leave social media or at least put in an honest effort to reduce social media time as much as possible. If you cannot do this, you must admit that you are addicted to them, and these companies will continually manipulate you. I strongly recommend that you watch “Social Dilemma,” on Netflix, which gives you a clear perspective of what the companies are doing and how they manipulate the their users.
STOP BEING A CYBER-ZOMBIE, DITCH SOCIAL MEDIA, LIVE A REAL LIFE!!!
Well said. Addiction to Social media real kills quality family time and health. Many are turning into social media zombie.