Heard this old song by the Moody Blues the other day:

“Nights in white satin, never reaching the end. Letters I’ve written, never meaning to send. Beauty I’ve always missed, with these eyes before, just what the truth is, I can’t say anymore…..”

Hard to tell what the truth is these days. Everyone is spouting their version to the universe daily, or sometimes multiple times per day. The internet has given us many wonderful things, but social media is not one of them. For the first time in history, anyone can say anything and have a global audience.

When radio and especially television came on the scene decades ago, there was wisdom enough in the world to know that there needed to be some rules about what could be broadcast. When a technology is new, it is not wise to let it run unchecked through society. Now, most of the controls that were in place back then are gone. Broadcast media bears little resemblance to the programming of the fifties and sixties.

But social media has shattered all the rules, which is the company mantra of one of it’s founders. Run fast and break things. What if the thing they are breaking is society itself? Because individuals can say one thing to journalists and then post on social media to talk about how ‘they really feel.’ We say things on social media that we would never say to someone’s face. That’s part of the charm. But these posts are finding their way to more and more audiences. More and more we are engaging in behavior that really had no place in society prior to the advent of social media. Sure, there was the National Enquirer, available at most grocery store checkout lanes. It was marketed with the magazines and entertainment, not with the newspapers. But now, people just read what they see on social media and think it’s the same as news, which it is not. Anyone can take a photo and post a comment about it. Many can alter photos, it’s not hard to do.

And what’s with Twitter, now called X. I signed up for it when it first came out but I never could see any value in it. Do I really need someone basically texting me every day, or several times a day with whatever’s on their mind? Isn’t this a kind of brainwashing, someone whispering little blurbs in your ear all the time? Or several someones, like a schizophrenic. I recently read about a woman whose life was ruined by some false social media depictions of her in a compromising situation with a teacher or coach, I don’t remember the details. I thought, if you weren’t on social media, it would never have mattered. It’s only because we let this form of technology invade our every moment that it has any power at all. And all we have to do to stop it is quit using it. It really is that simple. You don’t need it. I used to spend at least an hour a day checking in on my feed. I quit several years ago, when I realized all the damage that was being done, not to me personally, but to others who had gotten to far into it. And I got along just fine without it. Yes, I may have missed my friend posting a picture of the lovely steak dinner he had cooked, or another group of friends out at a local restaurant. But very little of any real importance has slipped by me after cutting loose from it.

It is an addiction, by any definition of the word. The harm that is being done to society, by breaking down the social norms may end up being devastating. Don’t for a second believe that the inventors of this technology care in the least about the plebes who use their tech. They absolutely consider you to be fools whom they have tricked into giving them all your data so they can profit from it. And profit from it they have, to the tune of billions of dollars. So it’s not just a place where you can go and check in with your friends. It’s a data-driven, world-wide surveillance system with no oversight, in most countries. In a few countries there is oversight in the form of the government knowing every single key stroke you make online.

Hope is a wonderful thing. It keeps us going when times are tough. I have little hope that the world will turn it’s back on social media on a scale large enough to stop the damage being done to our civilized world. I’ve been saying this for years and no one has listened in the least. But unlike the lyric in the song, I do know a few things that are true.