Is Social Media Controlling You?
Every 30 years or so, mankind finds a new way to communicate. In 1832 the telegraph was invented and turned letters and numbers into dots and dashes. You could go to the post office in California and send a telegraph to another post office in Ohio. This allowed big business to expand rapidly. In 1920 the radio was introduced into homes, birthed the music industry and became the only way people got their news.
In 1940 the television came along and reinvented our lives. People worried that television would promote violence and wreak havoc on our society. It was called “the idiot box” and was considered a health problem. Now we have a TV in every room in the house. We eat and sleep in front of it and can’t imagine not having one.
But in 1983, something profoundly changed our world. People started buying computers to use in their own homes; the internet was born and ripped through our lives like a title wave. Even now, we can barely keep up. Every week there seems to be a new “it” thing. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, TicTok, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. With television and movies, we passively watched other people tell their stories. But social media has moved the needle. No longer are we passive participants. We are active participants. What makes social media so different from all other forms of communication is that it demands interaction. In fact, the only way social media can survive is if we interact with it. And that is why social media companies need to continually find new ways to grab our attention and keep it at any cost.
We don’t just watch movies of people falling in love anymore. We get on social media, find someone, and fall in love. And there’s so much more. We can become influencers, earn income be famous, have millions of friends and followers. But let’s stop for a second and ask this question; Is social media controlling us, or are we controlling it?
