Has technology gone overboard when it comes to social media

<span style="color: rgb(93, 103, 106);">Hi Jessica, wow this is a difficult question to answer, thanks for asking. I have personally been thinking about it for some time now. Everyone has a different opinion on this matter and I think you need to make up your own mind about it. Personally I think modern society is struggling to define our tenuous relationship with technology and we need to make a commitment to humane design. A couple of things that have been eye-opening for me: the Center for Humane Technology (</span>http://humanetech.com/), and <span style="color: rgb(93, 103, 106);">the book "Digital Minimalism" (if you are wanting to be more intentional in how you interact w/ technology yourself). Hope you find these references hopeful.</span>

There isn't a straight forward answer to this. It's clear that social media has positives and negatives. In regard to social media it can be a great marketing and exposure tool. It can also be helpful for maintaining relationships when you cannot be present in real life due to distance or other factors. For these same reason's it can be very destructive as well.

Digital relationships will never replace or be as fulfilling as real life relationships, but many people are susceptible to over emphasizing their digital relationships and under appreciating their real life relationships. Social media should be a very small portion of the way you maintain your relationships, mostly used when you cannot interact with these individuals in real life do to circumstance or distance.

Additionally, while social media is great for marketing and raising brand awareness as it is a platform in which you can reach a wide audience. Equally so it can be extremely destructive as anything you ever put on the internet in general and especially social media can come back to haunt you one day. What is appropriate as a joke today or seemed like a harmless post as a teen can negatively impact your life in a tremendous way 5, 10, 20, or more years down the line.

Consider what we see today in our political system in which opposing political parties are digging up year books from political competitors from 40 years in the past and using that information to slander and destroy their opponents reputation, which leaves their job/livelihood in jeopardy. If people can find a private year book from 40 years ago which is not a publicly available social platform just think how detrimental the information you are putting out on the internet today could be in a number of years.

The craziest thing about this is that today what you post might be social acceptable while 20 years from now it could be considered highly offensive. Ensure that anything you post on social media you are prepared to own for the rest of your life.

This is a great question and I'm sure everyone you ask will give you a different answer. I can give you some of my personal thoughts on this.

Like any new advancement, technology can be used for good or be abused. On one hand, I think it's great that social media has allowed me to keep in touch with my friends so easily. I moved around quite a bit when I was growing up, so I have friends all over and it's nice to see what they're all up to. On the other, it can be exhausting to feel like you need to be kept up-to-date all the time. I personally have to keep myself in check and I don't hesitant to close or even delete apps that I feel like are affecting me negatively.

As someone who works in tech, it's super important to me that I am working at a company that I feel is actually doing good for the world. Just because it's "tech" doesn't mean it's good, but it also doesn't mean it's bad. We can leverage technology to do great things, but we also need to keep ourselves in check and make sure we don't abuse it.

I personally think it's not technology that's gone overboard but it's the use of it that has. I have a LinkedIn, Facebook, Whatsapp and Twitter account. I have managed to stay away from Instagram and others that may be out there.

I think it depends on the personality and how they want to use the social media. I have seen people share really encouraging and inspiring stories about their life or work they do or things they achieved like running a marathon etc. which could be helpful to others.

I connect with my friends and family using whatsapp as that's personal, enclosed group of people and you have a complete control over the audience of that group.

I use Facebook only to follow my hiking groups. I learn a lot from those forums, I can ask questions and people can share real life or self examples and I can rely on that information for my trip planning or training etc.

LinkedIn and Twitter is more for my career and work. I think it is important to have a presence on these medias to learn, share your values and learnings and be viewed for your next career opportunities.

So I guess if we all used the social media with a goal in mind then it's very useful. If we just used that as a distraction, reading every message being posted or sharing every single thing that happens in my day to day then it could be very overwhelming and distracting.

Being mindful and smart when it comes to using technology is the most important thing. I hope this helps with a perspective.