by Sean Paul Curry 

Social media, is it really so social?

Don’t get me wrong I love social media, I am on my phone updating numerous social networks 24 hours a day, seven days a week. 

The good thing about social media is that it keeps you in contact with your friends and family whereever they are in the world and more commonly these days people are using social media to make money by selling things they no longer need and even big business such as hotels are using social media platforms to sell and advertise their products.

Sadly some people use social networks to update the people with what I think is highly personal, private and sensitive information. Sometimes there are things that should be kept private.

Another downside is that for being called a social network some people aren’t very social. I’ve been out with friends for dinner and very often - and I am guilty of this - we could all have our heads stuck in our phones at the same time. None of us engaging in conversation. Things that you would normally talk about when you meet up with friends or family have already been discussed via messengers or group chats.

I like to go to concerts and other public events to absorb the atmosphere of what’s happening around. Some people on social media prefer to document every single second so they can show their friends what they are up to. By doing this you are missing the buzz of what’s happening. You could say you can watch it back but it’s not the same as living in the moment and experiencing something as it happens.

We should all make an effort to put down our devices/social media and converse and engage in simple conversation.

I’m not going to lie I myself am probably guilty of spending to much time on social media when I am with friends but it is something I am really going to try and remedy.

The main thing about social media that really bothers me is that some people use it to bully or belittle others. It sickens me to the core to hear about young people bullying each other via social networks.

Social media companies are, I believe, failing us in terms of people being able to bully and intimidate users on their site and apps. It has to be possible for them to create teams or taskforces that will solely deal with users who abuse social networks.

I think we must become comfortable with talking to our young people about what they are doing online, you don’t have to go into fine detail with them just simple details like what the website app is called and how it works.

Social media has become a massive part of people’s lives, me included. We spend too much time and put far too much private content online that we don’t need to share. We need to save things we put on social media to use when talk to friends and family in actual face to face engagement. We need to take our heads out of our screens and start to focus on what’s around us.

As soon as I wake up the first thing I do is check my social media and the last thing I do before I go to sleep is check my social media. I am going to make a big effort to cut down on the amount of time I spend on social media. I hope you will join me.