Social Media - A "Tool" not "Life"

Social media has taken the world by storm. We are the most “Connected” generation to ever walk the earth and thanks to the advent of smart phones and greater access to the internet, more and more people are now joining the “global village”. While the utopian idea of a world woven together through the power of the internet is heartwarming and inspirational, are we all truly aware of ALL aspects of this modern miracle?

Social media services like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (now “X”) and TikTok are free and easy to access. It’s great, isn’t it? A free service that allows you to post, share and keep in touch with your multitude of friends and family? Yet, have you ever wondered HOW these apps remain free to use? Sounds a bit too good to be true, doesn’t it? Whenever we see something that is too good to be true, we naturally ask the follow up question “What’s the catch here?”. Yet how come we never do this with social media? We just give them our email and punch in a hasty password, quickly “Agree” to their terms and conditions and we are off. Soon we are posting everything, from our location, the food we eat, the places we shop at, the people we hang out with letting any and everyone know who and what we are! The social media craze has spawned, and entire industry built around it…. And their motives are far more simple than building bridges and helping humanity – PROFITS!.

First, we have the “Influencers”, “Gurus”, “Visionaries” and the like who are plastered all over the internet spitting out buzzwords that so often go over our heads… that we need a dictionary to make sense of all of it! They tell us how we should “Build our brands” or “Invest in your dreams. Grind now. Shine later.”

Then we have the Governments, News media & the Military Industrial complex. These entities have weaponized social media, collaborating with the social media companies, they influence and stifle our most fundamental freedoms such as our freedom of expression and our right to think for ourselves! From scandals like Cambridge Analytica used to sway voter sentiment, the Google Software engineer who got fired for “Wrong think” to leakers like Edward Snowden (NSA Leaks), Julian Assange (WikiLeaks) the manipulation and deception found on the internet and social media nowadays is staggering.

Finally, we have the social media companies themselves, tracking, datamining, profiling and then selling our data to the highest bidder making billions off us! It’s like a reality TV show and WE are all participants! Just like the “Matrix” from the renowned Matrix trilogy… Instead of a battery, we are simply equated to a dollar bill! All the while we are “Plugged-In” to the social media matrix posting pics of our fancy meals and exotic trips all for the world to see. The Gestapo and the KGB would have given anything to get their hands on the power social media companies wield nowadays!

How do these companies lure us into this matrix? How do they get away with all of this when the truth and the proof is all out there? The answer is simple, Algorithms! The algorithms and prediction models are so advanced and fine turned today that they these companies know us better than we know ourselves! They fill our “feeds’ with hours and hours of content, that pique our interest and keep us mindlessly scrolling oblivious to the world around us. 

Another more sinister aspect of it is how social media companies control our access to information. Social media is now replacing the legacy media channels across the globe. This has set a new precedent where social media companies are openly de-platforming content creators who are sharing anything which goes against the common narrative. Alternative political opinions, ideas and thoughts are snuffed out in their inception before they are allowed to reach the masses. As a result it has created social echo-chambers where anyone with wrong think is instantly chastised, ostracized from the forum and quickly expunged from the platform!

Thanks to the social media craze, we have forgotten who we are. We aren’t “Brands”, “Hustlers” or “Toddlers’ to be shielded from information who must conform to some predefined way of existence, in order to be part of a matrix!

We are Human beings with our own Minds, creativity, hopes, dreams and personalities! We are so much more than a Number, a statistic in a report, a LinkedIn profile, an Instagram account or the number of hours on a time sheet!

Today, we pay money to be a part of the global network… to be “Plugged-in” to the matrix. Now with Augmented Reality just around the corner, everyone is hyped and excited and companies are investing huge amounts to become pioneers in this “New World”. But we the people must remember that a Social Media profile is nothing more than a great tool…. Use it like one. If not, decades from now, we will have to pay to be “Unplugged” from the very matrix we were so eager to connect to.