I call partial nonsense. Faddish tech bashing and harping on de jure boogeymen like "misinformation", which overeaches beyond valid criticisms to apply social connection technologies as a cause for the harm between people that has perhaps always been the case in many contexts. Cherry picking can make any argument seem valid and especially if you rule out other considerations in favor of a specific narrative agenda.
We still always have the option today of connecting with real people in the real world, as much as or more so than we have at any time in our history, while also being able to use social media and other related technologies to connect with distant family or friends in ways that are completely unique to a modern context.
This duality is a fundamental good, because it allows for new options from more contexts than ever before.
Yes, there are difficulties with social media and some people misuse these technologies in ways that emotionally harm them, but people who misdirect their efforts to socialize with others and balance their emotional lives have always existed, albeit with fewer options than today for staying in touch.
One can choose who to reach out to, and the presence of social media doesn't make it any less important or more difficult to simply choose people who are capable of caring. Those who don't care for contact are no more the case no than they were before digital connectivity was a thing in human society.
As for social media and misinformation? Give me a break. Legacy media has a vast, long, torrid and dirty history of spreading propaganda on an industrial scale, with few avenues for finding out differently, and they hate losing control of that, so now we get contrived fears about misinformation from the same industry that promoted yellow journalism and absurdly grotesque beliefs upon the public for many, many decades.
Politicians and other social actors have taken up this same banner of fear mongering for their own pet reasons and interests, and at least some segments of the wider public have swallowed these fears without giving them proper analytical context. Shameful.
At least now, the very fact that nearly anyone can post nearly anything allows for those who have better information, closer sources and more reasoned insights to spread their points with no controlling middlemen, even if they need to swim among tides of charlatans and conspiracy nuts. That however is a price to be paid for the democratization of access to instantly posting anything for worldwide access.
We still always have the option today of connecting with real people in the real world, as much as or more so than we have at any time in our history, while also being able to use social media and other related technologies to connect with distant family or friends in ways that are completely unique to a modern context.
This duality is a fundamental good, because it allows for new options from more contexts than ever before.
Yes, there are difficulties with social media and some people misuse these technologies in ways that emotionally harm them, but people who misdirect their efforts to socialize with others and balance their emotional lives have always existed, albeit with fewer options than today for staying in touch.
One can choose who to reach out to, and the presence of social media doesn't make it any less important or more difficult to simply choose people who are capable of caring. Those who don't care for contact are no more the case no than they were before digital connectivity was a thing in human society.
As for social media and misinformation? Give me a break. Legacy media has a vast, long, torrid and dirty history of spreading propaganda on an industrial scale, with few avenues for finding out differently, and they hate losing control of that, so now we get contrived fears about misinformation from the same industry that promoted yellow journalism and absurdly grotesque beliefs upon the public for many, many decades.
Politicians and other social actors have taken up this same banner of fear mongering for their own pet reasons and interests, and at least some segments of the wider public have swallowed these fears without giving them proper analytical context. Shameful.
At least now, the very fact that nearly anyone can post nearly anything allows for those who have better information, closer sources and more reasoned insights to spread their points with no controlling middlemen, even if they need to swim among tides of charlatans and conspiracy nuts. That however is a price to be paid for the democratization of access to instantly posting anything for worldwide access.