[jimjamuser]

Originally Posted by ThirdOfFive

The short reply: yes.

Social media (the mother of all oxymorons, in my opinion) is a cancer in this country. Of course, many people use it properly: my wife for example can talk to her family and friends in Thailand via FaceTime whenever the urge strikes her, as well as both of us being able to communicate face-to-face with family in Minnesota. But in my opinion the minuses of the venue outweigh the pluses. No matter how bizarre or dangerous one's beliefs might be, it is no problem to find like-minded people on the internet and communicate with them. And if what you are looking for is not information but VALIDATION (which I think all too many people are), then there is no point of view that cannot be validated through social media.

But the danger does not stop there. I understand that nefarious things have been going on only forever but the existence of social media makes it far too easy for the evil-minded among us to do what they do. Recruiting underage girls for the sex trade, for example. Set up drug deals. Arrange smash-and-grabs (there were incidents in Minnesota before we left where groups of people would all of a sudden show up in various vehicles at a big-box store, effectively raid the place of all the appliances and electronics they could carry, then run out the door with them and be gone in a matter of a few minutes; easily evading the police no matter if the police were called the minute the group began looting. And so on. Probably dozens more examples.

And let's not forget spreading hate. Back in the day, if you wanted to write, say, a letter to the editor, you sat down at a keyboard, or grabbed a pen and paper and wrote your letter. Maybe it would be printed in a week or two, maybe longer. But you knew upfront that it would be screened, maybe edited for grammar, some content deemed objectionable possibly taken out, etc. But today? Any yokel with an ax to grind or the intent to stir up negative emotions can sit down at his or her keyboard and dash off letters, opinions, and observations to this--or-that discussion group or newspaper thread that before the advent of the internet, especially as it exists today, would never have seen the light of day. And more and more those sites aren't even monitored, or rely on customer monitoring, which is a joke. Anyone who reads the "discussions" following newspaper articles know exactly what I mean by this. Hatred reigns.

Sir Winston Churchill once observed that "a lie can make it halfway around the world before the truth can get it's pants on". I doubt Sir Winston would have had even the slightest idea of just how right the future would prove him to be.

The software of media platforms like Facebook push people into opposite corners depending on their responses - so that you become polarized as far as various opinions go. The middle ground of opinion is made barren on purpose. the software does this for the purely greedy purpose of keeping you on their site for the MAXIMUM amount of time - to sell you MORE stuff. This lets the site, like Facebook, prosper but, at the expense of social cohesion. and apparently there are worse sites than Facebook, which personally I have never joined. Zuckerberg is another overly greedy individual. He gets no money from me! Congress tried to investigate Facebook, but failed. They dropped THAT ball.