Welcome back dear reader to a slightly different post today, I want to bring something that is concerning me to your attention. Social media is great. We all know this. I don't need to tell you just how much of a big deal it is. Twitter has over 313 million users monthly and on average Instagram and 300 million users a day. So you see it's a big deal. Social media has changed the world. In roughly 10 years how and what we do in our lives has been completely flipped on its head by social media. We can now reach more people that ever before, and share passions, interests and views. It's great.
I love and use Instagram the most, I post daily and I enjoy that. I'm proud of my feed, and yes I do have a theme and so what ?? I don't have hoards of followers, but that doesn't bother me. For me Instagram is a personal arm of me, and I love that.
I got into twitter over the summer, I know welcome to 2009, but I'm not an early adopter. Twitter seemed great, I enjoyed seeing people opinions and views and it all seemed so lovely.
However, scratching the surface a little and I began to see more and more hate being thrown at amazing people by what are essentially trolls. I didn't get where it was coming from, why were these people attacking other people. I'm not even joking when I say that they were proud of what they were doing.
I found it so hard to see what was being said to other people, that I thought I would just let them know that's not okay- big mistake- I have learnt just not to engage with these people. Instantly I found my self subject to hate, all be it not very original or deeply offensive, but yet it still affected me. All because I voiced an opinion that is correct- that bullying is not okay, and that in 2016 we should be better than this.
Honestly the type of person who spends their time working out how to type their vitriol in under 140 characters are not really people to consider wasting your time upon. Yet I'm writing this post, and you are reading it, because what if the person on the receiving end of this trolling was getting it all the time, and was deeply affected by it. We have to try and put a stop to it, because bullying ruins lives, whether it's face to face or from a phone keyboard. This type of behaviour is ruining people's lives, and I'm not going to stand and watch that go on.
I just don't understand, social media is a good thing and when harnessed can be a powerful voice for change, expectance and joy. Yet there are individuals that just use them for hate. We cannot in 2016 with all the advancements we have been given, still use them for hate.
I just think that social media has become so antisocial, just like all other great things given to us humans, a minority of the population always manage to ruin it for the majority who use it correctly. I'm not against freedom of speech, different opinions or conflicting views. I just don't think we should accept ignorance, intolerance and offensive rants from people we don't know. Growing up my mum always used to say to me "Ben if you have nothing nice to say, say nothing" why can't these people do the same?
I know I can't change what happens, but at least I know I said my piece and spread my opinion, I hope you agree and maybe just maybe hope that one day we can live in a less hateful world.