Guest blog: the contradiction of social media

guest blog through Lisa de Wit from Fridayonline web design

A video that is currently doing the rounds on social media is 'Look up' by Gary Turk. You have undoubtedly come across it on Facebook or another medium. Turk believes that in today's world, in which we are continuously busy making contacts online, we are actually less and less involved with each other. The message is delivered in a romantic way and in this way is confronting and moving. Is it really true that social media is actually making us more and more antisocial?

social media

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Youtube. All popular social media channels with a lot of users. Nowadays everyone has an online profile somewhere, regardless of age, gender or background. On Facebook, someone quickly has hundreds of 'friends' and if you do it the right way on Instagram, you can get thousands of 'followers'. But are these your real friends? Do your followers on Instagram and Twitter really know you? Of course not!

follow me!

There are many people on the train with earplugs and they do their best to make as little contact with others as possible. A talk? No, you might get results from that! While it is so easy on social media: just press a button and you follow someone or have submitted a friend request. Seen a beautiful person on Instagram? To follow! Who knows, maybe that person will follow you back, and then you have built a good friendship! This is nonsense, of course, but that's how it is these days. We rarely approach people on the street for a chat, because you don't know how the other person will react.

Who am I actually?

This also has to do with the anonymity that social media entails. The threshold for making contact is a lot lower than 'in real life'. We sit behind a screen and can enter
actually appear as we want. Social media is a godsend for people who have trouble making contacts in real life. Maybe someone is very quiet and shy in real life, but online very spontaneous and a real chatterbox. We also think we know everything about those we follow or are friends with on Facebook, because you see daily updates and we can even tell what someone has eaten in the evening. But is this really so? Does anyone also tell that her boyfriend cheated on her for the third time, or is she just telling her that she got such a beautiful bunch of roses from him? While we think we know people well, there may be a dark truth behind the online utopia.

Finally

The video of Gary Turk is so confronting, because we all know that social media is not that social at all. Although we have a lot of online friends, we do sit alone on the couch chatting with these friends instead of all sitting in the pub. Of course we all have some good friends that we see regularly in the real world too, but
we also realize that all superficial online contacts do not make us happier. Gary Turk makes a good statement with this. The irony is that he uses social media to get the message across that we should be using social media less. Maybe he should have thought about that a little longer?

By Fridayonline, web design and online marketing.