Lessons of Social Media

Social media has become a necessary evil for modern youths and adults alike. A big part of its rise in influence is that it’s so much fun. My own favorite uses include finding and arranging events, sharing music and pictures with friends, and discovering new friends. Every coin has two sides, though, and all of my favorite things about things like Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr can just as easily be my least favorite things.

While it can be fun to meet and interact with strangers or people, I knew a long time ago and lost contact with, it can also be inconvenient to be so exposed to those people. People don’t always have constructive things to say. This seems to be even worse when they think they are anonymous and doesn’t seem to be slowed down even when they clearly have no idea what they are talking about. I can post a picture that I find funny or meaningful and people I don’t even know might turn it into an angry debate about politics or religion or simple insults against me. More than once my own personal pictures have gotten very rude comments from people, I wasn’t even friends with.

Those early experiences have taught me to the trick to navigating social media. It’s no secret, just more of a chore than most of us would like. You have to be careful with your privacy. It seems like common sense, but it’s hard to realize how big of an issue it is until personally faced with the consequences of not doing it well enough. Since common courtesy from online strangers seems to be out of the question, the lesson of learning to guard ourselves is necessary for the future of social media.