It is perhaps inevitable that a society takes times to adjust with every new technology. I remember reading comments and concerns of people upon the introduction of the telephone, more than a 100 years ago.
People feared that it would destroy family life and communication between friends and relatives — that people would start to live in a disembodied plane devoid of real human interaction. I trust this sounds as familiar to you as it did to me! And perhaps those fears were justified, and communication did grow a little bit more remote and less personal. It is certainly true, also, that early telephone systems with their ubiquitous party lines were a source of rumors, both intentional and otherwise!
Harkening back to the start of the telephone and the flurry it caused is consoling in some sense. It points to a human tendency to mistrust new technology, mistrust not necessarily related to the function of the technology itself. At the same time, however, remembering the changes brought about by earlier technology should make us all the more cautious. After all, current communication technology has an ability to spread the word — and image — with an exponentially expanded breadth. It is a fabulous tool but it also has unprecedented power and we ignore this aspect of it at our own peril.
I think that social media has the power to magnify both what is admirable and what is despicable about human behavior. On the “admirable” side, we have crowd-funding campaigns in which thousands of people voluntarily contribute money to support a worthy cause. Being engaged by people’s stories and plights through online sources promotes a sense of kinship with others across wide territories and it is extraordinary and inspiring to see to what extent people are willing to respond materially. There is no way we can claim, anymore, that personal bonds and even communities built and lived in online are not “real.”
In an age that is characterized, in certain ways, by increasing isolation, new technologies that support social networking may work powerfully to ameliorate alienation by forming bonds.
But human nature is not uniformly benevolent, and that, too, is reflected and intensified by the presence and influence of social media. We have all heard incidents of nasty, harmful rumors being spread by social media. The technology seems to bring us closer, and in a sense, it may be that people are just doing what they have always done. But the power of this medium is unprecedented, as is its durability. A word spoken in person or over telephone lasts only a minute but messages on social media, as far as we know right now, potentially lasts forever.
I believe that social media is no passing fad. Every sign indicates that it is here to stay, and as such, it is very much in our interest to educate and protect ourselves and our children while navigating these new communication channels. More than anything else, we have a personal obligation to act honorably online as we do offline.
Oscar Wilde said, “Give a man a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” Social media, with its anonymous aspects, provides such a mask. And it would be wonderful to receive evidence that the “truth” to be told is not in fact an expression of the darker sides of humanity, but of what is admirable about all of us.
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