Tuesday, February 07, 2017

A good letter to the editor

Here's a good letter to the Fiji Times this week:

SOCIAL MEDIA

Arvind Mani,Martintar, Nadi | Monday, February 6, 2017
Let's face it. We are living in a digital age, and there is absolutely no going back. One of the biggest influences on society these days in both a positive and negative way is social media. Social media was originally designed to allow people to share interesting facets of their lives with their friends, but it has become so much more. It's how information gets passed around the globe now. In many cases, people first learn about current events through the Twitter or Facebook before hearing about it from conventional news sources. 

We also have come to rely on our technological devices for nearly everything we do. People these days seem as if they can't go anywhere or do anything without their smart phones, tablets, laptops, etc. They need to be in constant contact with others via electronic devices.
But, there is also a downside to being too connected to social media and devices that deliver them. We can become too dependent on them or we can become immune to what we are doing to ourselves in our lives. All of this can have a negative effect on our lives and on society as a whole, how we are being negatively impacted as a society.
Facebook is eating away at your time.
How much time do you spend each day on Facebook or other social media sites? Is it cutting into your productivity? Do you find yourself just wasting time to the point that you don't even know where it went? If the answers are yes, I bet you're not alone.
We've become "Likeaholics."
Speaking of Facebook when you post something, are you doing it just to see how many of your friends give it the proverbial thumbs up. This illustration shows that some people are treating "Likes" on Facebook as if it was a drug they needed to have injected into their bloodstream for them to feel good about themselves. Do you have such low self-esteem that you get depressed if you do not have enough "likes"?
Our devices are ruining intimacy.
Have you and a loved one ever spent time together where both of you are on your smart phones texting, tweeting, Facebooking or surfing other websites instead of communicating with each other? Is society getting to the point where we can't even be intimate with each other without being on our phones or iPads at the same time?
Families aren't spending quality time together.
If a mother is making holiday sweets with her family, what do the kids do?
They're not making sweets with mom. Instead, the children have their faces buried in their own electronic devices.
It used to be that parents used the television to babysit their kids. Now, it's a tablet, phone, laptop or video game that does the job.
We'd rather record someone than help them.
If a man is drowning or is involved in an accident, and is reaching out for help, it is more likely that someone has an iPhone pointed at him and is recording it rather than helping save this man.
In the end, with all of this, we are still killing the planet.
Despite all of our technological gains, we are still polluting Earth to the point that we have a virtual gun pointed at mother nature.
The clueless Trump seems too dumb to realise the disastrous impact of climate change.
It is my fervent hope that he can get some common sense and listen to our prime minister instead of childishly tweeting away with reckless abandon.
As we build bigger cities and pollute more, how much damage can we continue to do without it being fatal for all of us?

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