Ending commments: How should we use new media?

So here we are at the end of the semester. We’ve studied social and new media from a lot of different angles, and seen lots of applications for it. We’ve discussed the morality, the good, the bad, the silly, the sad, and all other opinions. So the question remains: how should we use it?

Like any good question, I don’t believe there’s one answer here. You can’t just say that it should be used for good; sometimes social media is meant to just be a silly, lighthearted means of communication. But in any case, I’ll try to give some of my more prevalent thoughts on how I think it should be used.

Obviously, sometimes social media doesn’t need to have a point or be for some kind of gain. But that doesn’t mean you should do that constantly. I’ve unfollowed several people on Twitter when it was obvious they were just tweeting constantly to improve their reputation in a company, or to look like a “social media goddess”, or whatever fancy title they wanted to have. There are lots of people who just keep spamming retweets and their company updates the entire time, and all I can really think is “who is paying that much attention anymore? does anyone outside your office building really care?”

That moves onto another point: the question “does anyone else outside X or Y group care about what you’re saying” as a judgement value for social media doesn’t really apply either. Every outlet of social media is meant to serve a different purpose, and within those outlets, people will find new, personal ways to use it. If you’re on Facebook posting about your personal life, for example, then it makes no sense for someone to yell at you saying “who cares about your personal life? shut up already!”….that’s kind of what Facebook was made for in the first place. However, I do think that there is such thing as too much of a good thing here. Again, there are people I see posting to Twitter once every 5 minutes on average. I’m sorry, but even on my most exciting of days, I do not have THAT much to say to the general public. Maybe it’s just me personally, but I still kinda feel that social ettiquette of “you shouldn’t dominate the conversation”, even online. If you keep chatting and chatting just to enjoy hearing the sound of yourself typing, I consider that a form of rudeness, and it dilutes your overall messages in the future. People aren’t paying as much attention to you, because they’ll see you as just chattering on like usual.

Finally, I see far too many people using social media to isolate themselves. One of the most fantastic things about these technologies is that we can communicate with so many people around the world, and find a group of people who shares our interests…but i see a LOT of people, on all sorts of networks, using social media to simply find their niche groups and never leave, and use those to avoid interacting with those around them. They get so comfortable in these groups, they forget to talk with people outside those bubbles, people with different viewpoints. It gets so bad that when these people do talk to others in the real world, and meet a difference in opinion, they aren’t able to handle it like they once could; they’re so incredulous that someone doesn’t share their view, and their world is shattered. Now, finding your people and your own group to be a part of is great, don’t get me wrong, but don’t forget how you came to have these interests in the first place: people showed them to you, when you had never heard of them before. One shouldn’t get so comfortable in his niches that he forgets to expose himself to others.

And wordpress is now telling me I’ve hit 650 words, so I should wrap it up now or else I’m breaking that second bit of advice I just gave up there by rambling on too much. What do you all think? Do you have your own ettiquettes you try to abide by online? Do you have your own opinion on how social media is best used?

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