Social media can be overwhelming

BY BILL REAGAN

Social media is can be overwhelming.

Human beings never want to miss a thing. That is why we keep up with the Joneses, buy tickets to concerts and sporting events, watch reality TV, and flip our thumbs up and down smartphone screens.

A lot of it is pretty innocent. Graduation pictures. Family parties. A night out with friends. We take some pictures, tag our-selves, and write about what an awesome time we had.

There’s also the constant barrage of religious beliefs, political opinions, news (both fake and real – especially fake) and TMI (too much information) about athletic achievements, ailments and appetites.

Many people seem to use social media as a kind of confessional, a place to unload their deepest feelings of pain, failure or resentment.

None of this stuff ever goes away.

The rules are different now. There’s no doubt that Twitter made Donald Trump president. He understands the power in the immediacy of social media. The social media message is right now, raw and unfiltered. However, the raw, unfiltered message may not be the real message. But once it is out there it stays out there and has a life of its own.

The danger in all this social media information is not that there is so much of it, but that it can make us stupid.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a great Lutheran pastor who was killed in a Nazi concentration camp, wrote this about stupidity. “Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless.”

Bonhoeffer went on to warn that stupidity is not a moral, but a human defect. Stupidity doesn’t know it is stupid so it is not influenced by reason and only attacks when challenged by facts.

Social media is great. Just don’t let it make you stupid.

Bill Reagan is executive director of Loaves & Fishes of the Rio Grande Valley.