GETTING REAL WITH FACEBOOK
By Ian Graham Leask, Publisher, Calumet Editions & Afton
Press
I keep seeing people threatening to leave Facebook. Do you all think anyone cares? By leaving, or even boycotting the service, you take yourself out of the conversation about its reform and future development. Stay and fight.
The amount of rubbish that gets posted on all social media is indeed alarming, so we have to develop the personal skills which enable us to by-pass posts with which we don’t want to engage. All of this would seem obvious, but I see such anger and anguish among my friends on Facebook that it prompts me to write this simple opinion.
I see folks expressing different reasons for their discontent; political, social and personal. If FB addiction and burnout is the issue then limit use of the service to 20 minutes a day, an hour a week, or whatever makes sense. Don’t engage in political arguments unless they’re being conducted in a civil manner–unfriend the nasties–there’s plenty of them on both sides of our toxic political divide. If FB has become your only social outlet, start ‘safely’ meeting some of your contacts and open up a little. I see a lot of isolation on here, a lot of cries for help, and a lot of attention-getting. Your problems are not the fault of FB,
FB is a multivalent service which, rightly or wrongly, has become the main communication device in the world. Despite its well-discussed flaws and vulnerabilities, the user is always in charge of his or her own content. Why are we blaming FB for our own egocentricity, lack of proper attention, and blind partisanship?
The ‘golden rule’ and ‘do no harm’ and ‘first things first’ are all verbal prompts we can use when engaging with social media. There should be a staunch prescription against any form of lying for whatever reason. Lying, fake news of any kind, and intentional distortions are unacceptable. If you want to leave something or boycott someone, direct that ire towards liars, but do your due diligence before you make up your mind about who is lying and who is telling the truth.
Of course, going forward we need a behavioral manifesto to help direct us in our online engagement, and such a manifesto should include ethical standards adhered to on the part of the corporations or vendors who administrate our social media. Social media, for want of a broader term, will accompany humans into the future; we’ll be using it on Mars and in the outer galaxies if we can survive as a species long enough to get that far. Who will write that manifesto for me to publish?
Ian Leask 