I'm into social media, Facebook, Twitter, so this is not a Luddite rant. But along with others I've mused about what the social media juggernaut seems to mean or imply for thinking, writing, and civility:
People say things in print they often won't say in person.
The quantity of online expression may be inversely related to its quality.
Because something is posted doesn't make it so.
Road rage has given way to cyber rage with neither one amounting to much.
It's easier to misrepresent, even lie, with more extensive, longer-lasting negative impact than it used to be.
No leader(s) can any longer stay ahead of or respond in a timely fashion to real-time events because people are communicating about the event as they participate in them and as they happen.
It's possible to say something profound in 140 characters, but this won't often happen.The number of followers or fans one counts is more a measure of celebrity than significance.
Christians should be active via social media like they should be active via anything else that doesn't violate the moral will of God.
Both the noble and the ignoble show up in social media because people are involved.
Tweeting what one had for breakfast says more about the tweeter's need for affirmation than the tweetee's need to know.
Relationships can be developed via social media, but the same character criteria should be applied as in any other relationship.
Social media is no longer limited to youth.
If international Christian ministries want young people to learn about, care about, and engage with missions, the ministries had better increase their online presence because youth live in cyberspace and if a ministry isn't there it doesn't exist.
Static websites, i.e. limited changes in content over time, attract one-time visitors.
Websites still form a foundation but they're almost passe in favor of more dynamic, rapidly changing real-time interaction available via new media.
Personality and character show up in social media expression, print or audio or video.
You are what you post?
Almost no one, let alone a notable leader or celebrity or otherwise recognizable person, is ever now in a truly private circumstance beyond the reach of cell phone video or still shot cameras, voice recorders, and of course, the emails, text messages, or other communications of people nearby.
The more we're plugged in, the more we live on the grid, the less we're unplugged and live life off the grid...what are we missing our Grandparents understood?
Ashton Kutcher and Britney Spears are easy to envision working in social media, not so much Dietrich Bonhoeffer or Mother Teresa.
In the movie "Gladiator" the Maximus character said, "What we do in life echoes in eternity." True, in the hands of Providence, but now what we post echoes for all our life in Google.
Wonder what the next Twitter du jour will be?
© Rex M. Rogers - All Rights Reserved, 2010
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