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A better society will help us to be less depressed. I have had some experiences with ill-behaving companies. Where bosses think that employees need to be in fe
by kartan 9y ago
A better society will help us to be less depressed.
I have had some experiences with ill-behaving companies. Where bosses think that employees need to be in fear so they are more productive. Where people is told to "never make a mistake" or they will be fired. You get the picture. People is depressed. You see people actually crying at their job.
I have also worked for functioning companies. People is valued and get positive feedback on their job. Mistakes are investigated to get an understanding and improve the processes to help people but personal blaming is forbidden. Where the manager´s job is to help employees to achieve their potential and support them.
In the first situation people is depressed and unhappy. People is paranoic and don´t trust each other. A blaming culture rewards lying about the status of projects and their results.
In the second situation people is more happy at work. Meetings are constructive and ways of improving the company are found. People find themselves realized at work.
Social media is just a mirror of society. It magnifies its uglyness or its greatness. I love to get into social media and see nature pictures from one friend. Another one composes music and shares it on-line. Most people will react joining into a good joke and answering with some one has a practical question. I love to be on social media, but I can understand how different that experience will be for others. Like the two companies I described, the same personal circunstances can be seen as gloomy or fantastic by the influence of your environment.
Social media can, and maybe should be regulated, but the only solution to the problem is better education that values the indivual while encourage to work for the better of all society. And then society is going to be able to look at the mirror and like the image that is sees.
- tzahola 9y ago* people are
- thom 9y agoYup, nobody seems to be addressing the issue that we appear to have raised and enabled a generation of bullies using these technologies. Seems a vastly bigger issue than the medium itself, or the vague implication that it's the victim's fault for using social media in the first place.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoBullies are, unfortunately, a historical constant, and are entirely orthogonal to the platform on which they engage in bullying activities. From ugly newspaper articles, through death threats delivered by letters, to that guy from elementary school who threatened to punch you if you didn't give him your lunch money - it's a people problem, not a platform problem.
- Retric 9y agoWatching TV, reading a book, etc teens don't get personally attacked, they do via social media. So, no mediums are different and the web has made things worse.
- thom 9y agoIt is indeed a people problem, and I'd be happy with people raising more compassionate children whatever media those kids end up using. One could talk endlessly about our failures to provide access to mental health services and support for early years parenting. I think the multi-generational harm that 'it never did me any harm' culture has wrought is immense, but I don't think these are facts of life that we should just concede. But as it is, most schools have more opportunities to intercede and mediate these issues in physical spaces. As parents and communities we have very little experience, and almost certainly inadequate tools for doing that online. It's possible that this is leading to a greater number of bullies and a greater amount of bullying.
- tailrecursion 9y agoI don't think social media is a mirror of society. Social media's focused on attention and addiction, and is not designed or measured on presenting an accurate picture of what's normal. Not only the population on Twitter is not a normal distribution, the interactions and interaction style are not normal. Social media has been around long enough that it's possible the crazy tech bosses you have seen may be an effect of the craziness of social media. But, then again it could just be crazy bosses. I still agree with your first sentence. Plenty of room to improve. But I think the online world is the #1 component to focus on to make that happen.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoThat was true of newspapers too, since their very beginning. We've strayed very far from "normal" over the past couple thousand years. Writing is not normal, if by "normal" you mean what human mind is adapted to. I say that as a reminder, because it's too easy to reattribute to social media what's really a set of more general problems that have been with us for some time now. Loss of fidelity in communication is not caused by social media, it's caused by writing. Distorted view of the world is not caused by social media, it's caused by mass media, and has been a problem since the first newspaper.
- wepple 9y agoSocial media is not a mirror of society. When I go and spend time with friends or family, I’m doing it fairly unrestrained and of my own will. Sitting around a dinner table chatting about whatever only involves the people at the dinner table. Social media takes this idea and tries to move it into a browser seemingly innocuously, but adds algorithms and manipulations all with an end goal of selling attention to advertisers and personal information to marketing companies. It may feel like it’s just the real world society except online, but every little interaction is so drastically transformed, you’re left with something completely different.
- nine_k 9y agoYour picture fairly accurately describes Facebook. It's not as accurate for Twitter, and is totally off mark (fortunately) for things like Mastodon or Dreamwidth.