The original intention of social media was to connect people, and allow us to share our lives with people who were geographically distant. We uploaded statuses about what we were doing, what we were eating, and where we were going. This soon became a competition to pretend we all were living wonderful lives all the time. So, we stopped doing that.
So, social media morphed into two different things. For the younger generation mainly it became a platform to entertain our friends with crazy TikTok videos and funny memes. For the older generations, mainly, it became a micro-blog site where we can share our thoughts.
For those sharing their thoughts, it has now quickly descended into a soapbox, where we can shout our deep frustrations and anger at the world. We shout at everyone we can, believing that everyone is listening. But because we can't actually see who is listening, we use language, affectations and emotions that we would never use if people were actually in the room.
Sadly, right now, it feels to me as if only those who are most upset, most negative, most angry, most scared are most vocal and active on social media. And they're not just limiting themselves to their own status updates, they seem to have a lot of time to be able to roam around the Internet and add their loud, negative voices as comments on everyone else's timelines too.
There are two responses: we can either try and drown out these negative voices with positive ones, or we can just walk away for a while. I am not sure which will work best. I am sort of trying both at the same time: only coming to my social places to be positive, and running away quickly when the wave of negativity threatens to crash on me.
Social media is not helping us at the moment. Let's try and fix that.