Social Media: The Real ‘Upside Down’

I remember as a kid growing up and receiving these things called “letters” from people. People that took the time to out of their day to sit down and take out a pen & paper to handwrite you something so personal and something in which if you paid any attention to the impression their pen made on the paper you could see the motion and the importance of the thing they were writing to you about. Not only that but knowing that they had to go to the store to purchase stationary just to send you something so personal and so direct.

Fast forward about 20 years to where we are now. We have such incredible technology, the technology that allows us to send such quick responses and do so many incredible things. It makes so much of our communication easier and simpler and gives us the ability to do so much that we could not do before in the form of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. However, as great as these platforms are, I want to take the time to give you my opinion on how I truly believe that these tools should merely exist as that, just tools. Ever since we have had social media starting as far back as MySpace, it has given us the ability to connect with others and be able to find those people that we may have lost touch with or even family members that we otherwise wouldn’t be able to find. I’ve read countless success stories of children finding their mother or father and even brothers or sisters getting in touch with siblings that they had no idea existed.

While these things are fascinating and I am very glad that we have tools to be able to stay connected with people or be able to keep up with people and their lives or see pictures of our friends a family. I strongly feel as though these tools that we use every single day has also driven a wedge between the very thing I spoke of earlier which is personal, human interaction. How many people actually write letters to others anymore? When was the last time that you did? Most of us were fortunate enough to grow up in a time when human interaction was a lot more personal than it is now and that’s my problem with these social media platforms is that they were merely used to help us connect, but I personally do not believe they should be used as a persons only means of interacting with other and to me, that is exactly how I see it. I feel as if Facebook, Twitter, and others are evolving human interaction and making it much more of a lazier experience than ever before. I feel as if people have forgotten how to interact with each other face-to-face because we are so used to the simplicity of using a smartphone or a tablet.

Don’t get me wrong, I love technology when used properly. I’ve done tons of reviews here about many different products that I love and enjoy.  I even see the value and benefit of using an SMM service to reach an audience if you are in the entertainment portion of social media. However, I am not a fan of when those products become used as a means to cut down on personal interaction which I believe has been the case. Nowadays, it seems that social media is a platform for mostly negativity and hate with it being easier than ever to tear people down without having to face judgment from someone being right in front of you. What should be used as a tool for good and a tool used to make keeping up with others easier, it tends to be used as a tool for bad intentions where people are able to be someone else and say things or be a different kind of person than the one that they would be when discussing things in person. This is why I see social media as the “Upside Down” a reference to one of my favorite shows. It’s a whole other world where people are not who they really are and in my opinion tend to be a lot faker and without being able to use body language or hear someone’s tone it can make having discussions of any kind be easily able to be taken out of context.

We live in a time where we rely too much on social media for our interactions. We let our smartphones and our other devices dictate our lives. I don’t want my children to feel like the only way they can talk or interact with others is by using a smartphone or a tablet. I hope for a future where maybe we bring back writing letters to people again and making personal human interaction something that isn’t just done by means of technology.  We live our lives these days spending a majority of it looking at a screen of some form. Whether it be a TV or a computer that we forget there are others around us that we can interact with. It’s time we start looking up at the world around us more than looking down at a screen.

Brian Daniels

I’ve been writing and covering many forms of entertainment such as comedy shows, and arcade bars as well as reviewing video games and more for the past decade. I love to write and I am blessed to be able to have the opportunities that I have had in the entertainment and technology fields.