Is social media a waste of time?

The idea of social media is good eg keeping in touch with friends and relatives on FB or sharing some holiday snaps on IG.

The issue is that the applications are beyond gamified. The algos no longer show updates from close contacts but posts(and products) you’re more likely to engage with, even if thats for negative reasons like rage bait. That takes the susceptible down mind warping rabbit holes.

It also gives people attention which becomes addictive in itself, from that nutter you went to school with who always posts about their latest issues on FB to the girls(or guys) with their asses out on Tiktok. It’s not good for youngsters.. hell, even dating is heavily gamified now which presents a whole other host of issues.

I got rid of FB and Twitter but occasionally venture onto IG, after 5 minutes I need to remind myself of how much the scrolling is melting my brain.
 
Stu999 said:
What do you think? Is it more negative than positive? Or does it have a good side?

Inb4 “But OcUK is social media…”.
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More negative.

Influencers
Fake news
Tool to spread hate
Show offs boasting about what their latest expensive purchases are
Elon Musk
Donald Trump

As much as it has and had its positives, which I think were more in the early days, I think the negatives far outweigh the positives. Social media has made a lot of society into brainless Lemmings that will believe and follow anything.
 
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Mostly a waste of time imo. Can be useful at times but it's very easy to get sidetracked ending up wasting time.
 
Nasher said:
It should all be anonymous, like the internet used to be. Even posting your real name somewhere was considered idiotic back in the 90s and early 00s. Posting pictures of yourself and rough location alongside it on a website was the highest level of stupid (and still is really). No one could be targeted because you didn't know who anyone was and they could change their alias at any time.

All this nonsense and online bullying started when Facebook etc arrived and asked people to post their lives online. For the sake of harvesting their data.
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I know what you mean about the old days. I preferred those times too. But I think the people online back then was the result of natural selection as mainly only people with an interest in computers (not consoles) were on there. It was a new world and people were more sociable in that we were all tackling the same thing. The first impression was to be friendly.

But since computers and the Internet was flooded with people who aren't even interested in computers we have the yob element at work. It's progressively getting worse. Many of these people have no respect for the internet or computers.

Sadly I don't think we'll ever get back to even a similar version of the 90s. The real offline world as invaded the online world.
 
The phase when social media was literally just a feed of updates from people (friends) you chose to follow was the golden age. Was genuinely good to see what old school friends were up to, and had a good school reunion organised through Friends Reunited.

Sadly though that was never going to last, because there's no money in it and someone needs to pay for all the infrasructure, so the ads arrived.

Personally, I absolutely despise being advertised at, so I'm quite happy to pay for YouTube premium, they are providing a service that is of value to me and I give some money in exchange, a fair deal in my view. . I'm hoping Instagram roll out their premium soon so I can just pay for that instead of having adverts forced on me.
 
GGizmo said:
I know what you mean about the old days. I preferred those times too. But I think the people online back then was the result of natural selection as mainly only people with an interest in computers (not consoles) were on there. It was a new world and people were more sociable in that we were all tackling the same thing. The first impression was to be friendly.

But since computers and the Internet was flooded with people who aren't even interested in computers we have the yob element at work. It's progressively getting worse. Many of these people have no respect for the internet or computers.

Sadly I don't think we'll ever get back to even a similar version of the 90s. The real offline world as invaded the online world.
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I remember my parents buying their first PC back then, they got it from one of them office/industrial type complexes where shops rent out a unit. Started out on dial up internet, I guess this was the start of things and why they decided to purchases a pc. Anyway I remember going on chat rooms, as that was the thing back then, I didn’t frequent them for long though as I encountered some proper weirdos on there.
90s we’re good though, apart from chat rooms social media platforms like FB were not around I don’t think at the very start.
 
It depends how you use it.
Facebook to me is just an endless stream of crap these days. I rarely ever look at it.
Twitter is great for keeping up with news, and finding out about things that have just happened as people tweet about it.

I think overall the impact is mostly negative. Previously village idiots were ignored, now they club together and have loud voices on social media.
But at the same time you can find out about things that mainstream news would never cover.
 
Nutty667 said:
But at the same time you can find out about things that mainstream news would never cover.
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Even this isn't always a good thing though.

What used to be a small local story in a paper now becomes talked about Worldwide, which feeds the culture wars beast.

Most recent example is the mother who got arrested for confiscating her daughters iPads, but it's really because her ex partner/father of the girls reported her to the police, So now Americans think the UK police go around arresting parents for confiscating things.

Facebook in the early days was excellent. Now it's a cesspit
Same with Twitter.
 
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Some modern social media has its uses for hobbies and whatnot, but not for me. I bailed several years ago and deleted my accounts.

In fact, these forums are the only sort of "social media" im active on anymore.
 
I expect I'm in the minority these days, but I've never seen the fascination with the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp etc.

Far too social for me for starters!

Then there's the whole thing that anyone can post practically anything while hidden behind an alias, when if they had to post under their real name, a lot would probably consider their actions in advance.

So much nonsense posted that isn't just opinions, there's no many creating their own facts that are contrary to sciencific fact.

I'll stick to just watching a few selected Youtube channels about animals, such as Brian Barczyk; Snake Discovery; Clint's Reptiles etc.
 
I find it's all been devalued. People's addiction to posting anything and everything continued to saturate feeds, which devalue the content even more, before devaluing themselves in the process.

Then you have an algorithm dictating what content is fed to you, leaving out content that you actually want. No chance of categorising or filtering anything.

Social media is well on its way to helping end the internet of today, just like how the internet of yesterday has long gone.
 
If the social media companies were made responsible for the provable lies they published.. then we could get back to normality.. however.. given no one has the balls to even bring individuals to task when they blatently lie.. then what chance with a "for profit" organisation..

We live in the time of fake news.. and there is no going back.. unless the lies are punished..

Fat chance.. given even presidents.. and MP's can lie with impunity..
 
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VincentHanna said:
So now Americans think the UK police go around arresting parents for confiscating things.
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They certainly do, amongst other such incidents.
I have quite a few Murican friends and almost daily they’re asking if what they’ve seen is real, and sadly I have to say it is.

One example from Twitter today (the guy was apparently reported by the Conservative mayor for hate speech)..

 
Nah its terrible..

People pick up the phone less to check in on you since social media has been about.

Hang on a minute, maybe i've turned in to a *****.
 
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