Has social media ruined society?

There was a study lately which revealed that more people felt inadequate because their friends on FB had such exciting lives in comparison. This is not the fault of social media. W&nkers who wont shut up about how great their lives are (often lies) have always existed. Back in the day, it was in work, in bars, meeting someone in the supermarket that we had to put up with this. At least now, we can scroll past it or ignore it.

I'm actually a fan of social media as it allows me to keep in touch with what is going on with friends and family all over the world, but rarely post on FB apart from 'Happy birthday' or 'congrats on the baby.' Unfortunately some people dont have a filter

I deleted over 100 off my fb. Only kept family. Close friends. And even unfollowed a good few of them because tbh family are normally the most annoying. I must admit its better. As for twitter. I dont follow anyone off my fb list..

I completely aagree that there is a he'll of a lot of ****e on social media. I also think though, that it hahas provided an important alternative to mainstream media. Living in the UK, I've found that the BBC and other news channels have essentially become biased party political broadcasters for right wing parties and corporate interests. I've actually come across some really interesting articles and points of view on social media, that otherwise wouldn't have been available to me. I think Twitter is probably more beneficial than Facebook in that regard. I just have to ignore thw "u ok hun" brigade!

As an 18 year old who uses Facebook on a regular basis I must say that most of the dramatics I see on Facebook are from older relatives in their late 30s. It's always my generation who would get the blame for using social media in a negative way but being honest most of my friends and other people my age never post anything on Facebook, the only reason we're still on it is because of the chat feature .
I've seen my cousin who is in her 40s rabbit on about how **** her husband is and pictures of her very sick disabled child in his hospital bed (which I think is really wrong as he has no choice in whether he wants the photo up, he is 16) etc etc ... I've unfriended some of these people and some were so upset by it that they won't talk to me in real life . I'd rather not see your marital problems or any other personal information spread like slurry for all to see on Facebook thanks very much.

Deactivated my Facebook three years ago and was off it for around a year. One thing I noticed was that I feel out of touch with the "cool" trend of the week. Could be some celebrity video leaked or a new word like SWAG/YOLO or whatever. Was great.

Eventually I reactivated my profile so I could uses the "sign up with facebook" thing many websites have. It's pretty handy.

I normally check facebook once every three months or so. The last time I logged in I had forgotten my password it had been so long. The photo of me on my profile is at least 3 years old. The design had changed quite a bit and my newsfeed was just full of vines, clickbait and **** statuses.

The majority of people I know have kind of outgrown posting every single second of their lives like "checking in" to bars, taking group photos every two seconds and so on.

Whatsapp groups ftw!

SilverScreen wrote: »

I'd say stupidity has ruined society. Social media is just another outlet for them but not the cause.

I'm not so sure, it spreads stupidity like a virus. The problem with on line media is that it offers stupidity a global platform when previously it merely had a local one.
It used to be the case, for example, that tin foil hat nutters sat in their basements and people thought that they were at best stupid and harmless, the internet has provided a place for the crazies to gather in numbers and create their own virtual comunities that are self-reinforcing their dilusions as they share them. Hence you get stuff like 'vaccine conspiracies' that get inexplicable global traction.

This is facilitated by the ironic narrowing rather then broadening of shared information. we used to think that the internet would educate us because it's a vast well, the sum of all human knowledge at your fingertips, however the ability of both users and companies to 'tailor media feeds' actually means that you will only ever be proffered news feed that reinforces your views based on your preferences, so your connected devices decide what it is you actually 'want to see' and thus peoples horizons narrow rather then broaden.

On top of that you have the TLDR effect. Most poeple will skip this post for example because we have what is almost a compulsive adiction to the next link on the page. This means people absorb little and skip across the surface of the net, but never into anything in depth.

Finally you have the demise of traditional print media. As rationalization occurs and foreign bureaus close, newspapers no longer have the staff or the time to do in depth investigative reporting. The media has become all about click bait as it tries to get out ahead of social media and that makes 'first' more important then accurate or sourced. So even traditional media, due to under resourcing and competition, have morphed in to shallow, unverified click bait stories and opinion pieces with no basis in fact. When pointless entities like Kim Kardashian hit the front pages of mainstream media, you know the internet is killing brain cells.

The internet has opened a window into the shadows of society that were mostly hidden from our views. The only problem with social media is that it clumps too many of these people together that they start gaining more conviction for their own shtty ideas that they would otherwise have had. It also makes journalists lazy and incompetent. Then there's clickbaiting.

It hasn't ruined society, but I do feel it's not a benign force. Companies don't give a sht as profit their bottom line but ultimately that means stupidity wins out. Misinformation is being spread today faster than it ever was. Whether all these fractals in society can stay together will be interesting to see.

my Facebook account is deactivated for nearly a year now and my life is a million times better without it , and I know loads others that say the same

I never had a Facebook :O I hated Bebo as a teenager, always worried about how I looked to other people so never got a FB

There's plenty of times I think I should have set one up...

But then I think there's already so many ways that I waste my time, commuting to work, TV (don't even watch that much) that I can't really afford another time suck. As much as possible id like to try and live in the moment even if that just means paying attention to what's around me.