Social Media

Hey Guys,

Something that is growing in our society, although it may be past its explosion it is still something so integrated into our culture. Facebook is probably the most well known but there are an ever increase amount of ways to "communicate" via social media. If it is through Twitter, Blogs, Facebook, YouTube or other social media outlets this is our new generation of communication. Being a business major they are teaching us that this is the new form of advertisement, this is the new form of marketing and this is the future. BUT I pose this question, should this be our future? I am not saying that Facebook, or instant chat is a horrible thing. The positives of globalization social media far out weigh the negative. However there are some looming negatives that are at hand. We are a culture that knows the least amount of each other. I am at huge fault for this. Think about it for a second either your communication through email, or instant chat, how often do you miss sarcasm, tone or just the mood of a conversation? Even within these last few days I can think of two to three times where conversations or messages have been mistook based upon just social media. Something is lost in that translation. 

Should this be our future? I myself do not think that it should be our future, however I think it is a reality that this is going to be our future. It is unfortunate. The reason I say this is unfortunate is because you miss so much when you miss the most important part of communication. Which are non-verbal communication or body signals. I always find it shocking when people get "shocked" about something going on to their close friend. Now I am not perfect and I always make mistakes but I believe that we miss so much today. We miss when people are struggling, we've learned so much how to put a front up especially online and especially hide our true emotions. When I was going through depression I stopped communicating to people through real forms of communication and just talked online. This is because you can always limit what you say online, even right now I can control how much I share.

Especially when I was younger I use to love and still love going online the reason is because you can be whoever you want, you can take away any flaw you want and be something more than you think you are. One of the reason I loved the play World of Warcraft is because you can create the character you want to be and be any personality you want. Let me bring this back to social media again, I think it is another way to create any image you want and hide your weak points. It is a rarity that you are going to see someone post a status that says something of personal meaning where they are truly struggling. It sucked when I was going through depression because it is ten times easier to put up a front or something you were not then what was going on. That is my fear with social media because instead of promoting being really who you are it helps us create/show something we are not.

Or then again this might just be me; I am nowhere near perfect :)

Goodbye for now,

Christian Sawka

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