We live in polar times. The age of diversity-crushing referenda and thumbs-up, thumbs-down instant assessment of incoming data. It’s a habit we can all too easily slip into, for the sake of ease and efficiency when we’re playing the busy life card. Or as we scroll and swipe our way through walls and timelines looking for likes and hoping not to miss anything. Close to my heart currently is the guaranteed provision of polarity: “is social media good or bad?”
Taking Facebook as the principal example, I note that founding influence Mark Zuckerberg has set himself the task of addressing one of the criticisms of his network, specifically in the realm of user experience. This is a clear example of how the rest of us might summarily judge his platform as wrong or bad. See how your mind responds to this, from a recent BBC article on the matter:
"We've gotten feedback from our community that public content - posts from businesses, brands and media - is crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other," wrote Mr Zuckerberg.
He said that he and his team felt a responsibility to make sure Facebook was good for people's wellbeing.
If public content is to be promoted, it will now have to be seen to encourage community interaction - as happens within the tight-knit groups that discuss TV programmes and sports, he said.
Yes, Facebook has effects and impact that we don’t like, or see benefit in, but it has also brought untold joy and benefit. Today, in fact, I celebrate a seven year ‘friendversary’ with a woman who is now my wife. I claim that as one of Facebook’s greatest blessings, and in that instance, I am eternally grateful.
On the matter of brash and silly polarity, however, I see it as an evolutionary stage we’re going through. I certainly hope we can rise above it. And I also hope we can stop taking it so seriously. We seem triggered to make snap judgements and then a vicious cycle begins where others are triggered by our triggering. So-called President Trump is a master of this process. And I suspect nothing gives him more pleasure than attention, which is so readily given him at the merest drop of a tweet.
Whilst one quick and dirty assessment of this era might be that it’s ‘shallow’, a good antidote to that might be some depth and application. For me, understanding and progress lie in the discussed detail of issues, which takes not only time, but effort too. Time and effort we’re often not happy to give, labouring as we do under the illusions of ‘too little time’ and ‘too much trouble’.
What might these lame excuses be covering up? Perhaps our vulnerability, the embarrassing matter of our unconscious bias and the eternal motivation of not wanting to look daft. Perhaps we could get over that last one? It’s too late. We’re already looking pretty daft. You only need to look at social media to see that!
However daft we might collectively look at times on the social media-scape, it obviously doesn’t make the fast-expanding range of platforms, all of us, or any of us, ALL bad. My colleague and founder of OurNet - Michael Brodie - put me straight on my assumption that Facebook was about community, when of course it’s about connection. On that basis, Facebook has done an incredible, previously unimaginable, job of connecting people.
The shortcomings we see and project on to social media, are probably like most projections - a reflection of our own shortcomings and inabilities. If it’s community we want, and I do, then community is the work WE must bring to it. To lift the likes off the page, off the screen, we need to take the trouble. We need to talk. We need to have conversations. We need to go deeper. And whilst that may seem onerous, I’d venture to say it’s nearly always worth it.
The Devil might indeed be the detail, but heaven on earth may well be there too.
If we merely connect with our minds, the polarity will never be far away. If we ‘only connect’ with our hearts, we discover we’re pretty much all the same and want the same things, dream the same dreams. Go on, give it a go...
Mark Zuckerberg’s plans for Facebook in 2018 - [http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42657621]