SOCIAL MEDIA AND LIFE MATTERS

How are you connected? Increasingly we are affected by how we are connected. Connections have their risks. Social networking sites have become a prime and productive information source for identity theft as people reveal many of the key details of their lives without even thinking of who might be reading it. Blogs, like this one, provide a platform for people of all opinion stripes whether that opinion has any socially redeeming value at all. Email and texting provide almost instant communication but also keep us from the kind of face-to-face human interaction that is most effective in conflict resolution or insuring genuine understanding.

Recently I attended a conference on the Internet and its uses and heard what may be an oxymoron - intimate anonymity. Such anonymity can be provided by the Internet as you can hide behind a screen name, but mere communication does not equate with intimacy. Just read some of sheer banality and trivia that passes for postings on Facebook.

Yet the social media has given us a new tool and a new motivation for rediscovering precious relationships of a previous time. And it encourages people to leave their isolation and connect with friends. It gives a platform for dialogue that sometimes time and space negate without this help from the Internet. It bids people to stop being closed and parochial islands and connect with friends and ideas continents away.

The social media has sparked a revolution whose impact is yet to be seen in its fullest. Yet it is to be celebrated because it gives one more means for people who are disconnected and lost, to connect and belong.