Social Media has not benefited us

I don’t have to explain social media. It’s one of the most well-known things in our society. However, it’s done nothing for us.

I know social media is a fine tool to stay connected with your friends —although it’s a very impersonal means of communication. When I want to know what’s going on with my friends, I call and ask them. The only people I choose to stay in contact with in my life are people I truly care about. If you don’t “stay connected” with someone, you probably aren’t that close. And you shouldn’t be able to know so much about someone’s life without having spoken to them in years, or ever. Much of social media isn’t even communication: It’s just monitoring or “stalking,” which is really creepy.

This constant stream of information about others has made us more paranoid and anxious than ever. Take Facebook fear and depression, for example. The fear is that you may have missed a notification; the depression is spurred by the sight of others doing things you wish you could be doing, and in being consumed in their lives through social media. Anxiety U.K. did a study that found social media negatively impacted 51 percent of 228 people polled. And 45 percent said it made them feel worried or anxious.

Our chief concern, of late, has been to legitimize our lives. We are obsessed with documenting every little moment we deem noteworthy, so that we can have proof of it. And then, we have to display our lives for the world to see so we can sleep soundly at night, knowing that other people approved of that slice of cake we ate.

We now inherently compare each other’s lives by cataloguing how many interesting places we’ve taken photos of, how clever our posts are (judged by the number of “Likes” or re-tweets), how many people comment on them and the people on a list who clicked a button confirming that, yes, they acknowledge our existence.

This is not a healthy way to live. A study at the University of Maryland had the participants go into a media blackout, after which most expressed extreme discomfort without social media.

We shouldn’t worry about whether something we did was cool, trend-setting or notable. And we shouldn’t try to turn arbitrary nonsense into public matters. When you get a piece of cake, eat that cake. When something bad happens, just deal with it. When you have a fun experience, be satisfied that it occurred. When a person does something nice for you, say ‘Thank you’ to that person’s face. Just live life.

Some observers say a benefit of social media is the way in which news travels faster than ever before. But, this is a double-edged sword because false information and rumors also can spread like wildfire. The speed in which we hear things leads to much hyperbole in the negative aspects of our generation. We think that many things such as violence, illiteracy and bullying are rampant, due to the fact that we now hear about these things whenever they happen, rather than any actual increase.

But, surely this is a great way for marketers to spread the word on their products, right? Newspapers, television, radio and social media are all cornerstones of advertising and communication, however. Social media is just the new kid on the block. It will eventually be irrelevant. One hundred years from now, we may be communicating through each other’s bloodstreams. For right now, social media is what’s in. Therefore, anyone selling something is forced to embrace the most popular model of information distribution.

Another potential benefit is that, thanks to social media, we are more literate than ever, due to the massive amount of reading and writing people do that way. But, since everything people read and write there is so devoid of substance, spelling and basic grammar, it’s a Catch-22. What’s more, it worries me that people have to put in so much effort to sound like an idiot. There are big wavy lines that tell you what you’re writing is wrong. You can go back and edit your mistakes. You have to truly commit to illiteracy by ignoring all that stuff.

I’m not saying that social media (man, I’m sick of those words) is the bane of humanity, nor do I think it should be destroyed. All I am saying is that nothing good has come from it. You gain nothing with Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and whatever else. And if you were confused by all the correct spelling and sentence structure in this column, let me rephrase: Yo, itz ridclous hw bad lame social mdia is nowwwadayys #forevur.