The triumphs of social media

As future generations look back at us and what we accomplished, will they appreciate the groundwork we laid in delivering information quickly and efficiently? Maybe they’ll be too busy drowning in the millions of pictures taken of various dinner plates.

They’ll possibly still be enjoying the astounding ignorance that existed as anyone with a phone or the internet took to social media to share their every thought. Maybe in the future they’ll use Twitter to push new and interesting garbage that no one wants or share images of themselves committing crimes. Not even kidding, it has been done before.

I don’t see that for our future, because I have a hope for mankind. Mostly because I spend my time reading positive news that is shared with me and less time focused on all the ignorance flowing from Facebook and Twitter.

As we have progressed deeper and deeper into our always-connected digital age, all the harm that can occur, and is occurring, is easy to see. What we need to focus on are the strengths that come from a well-connected society.

As we share news and information with one another we are creating a society informed on current issues. Though at times what is shared may be skewed one way or another, over time the best will rise to the top and become what people share most.

Well, in a perfect world that’s what would happen. Finding news isn’t an easy task, as no one page you frequent will have all the news that is fit to read. Yes, the “important” news will be covered by the bigger outlets. I’m talking about the news that isn’t going to bring in the readers like celebrity gossip, the news that shows us the darker sides of humanity, or maybe just the weirder side.

The news you see from someone’s blog, the things that doesn’t make sense to post on a bigger news site, that is what will redeem social media from all the foodies and pictures of cool bags as they float in the breeze.

When we share personal stories about people losing their houses to big banks and corrupt cops taking out aggression on an innocent civilian, we are sharing stories. As we began as a race, stories were what we had to learn about our history. They were grand epics that took a lifetime to learn and pass on so the next generation could experience it.

We have moved on from that, and some may say it’s not a good thing. But I would argue that it is. As we share our lives and what we find important, even 140 characters at a time, we carve out our niche in the annals of history.

We share what matters most to us. We share what we love. We share our souls to strangers on the Internet, and there they will remain until the day humanity ends, whether by our own hands or another’s.

It’s easy to look at social media as just another phase our society is going through. We don’t think about what we are doing as we read an interesting story, or comic or just share what someone else has said for the enjoyment of our friends. But what matters is that we are sharing it.

Social media is just a new form of what has existed since language has existed, a way to share stories about us and the world in which we live.

Hopefully future generations will overlook the sepia tones in every picture.