Juno News - December 28, 2019A Decade in Review – Social Media
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
204.53981
Summary
In this episode of we look back at the past decade in social media, from the early days of MySpace to the rise of social media and the toxicity that came with it, and what we can learn from it.
Transcript
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So continuing these looks at decade in review issues, I think one of the big things that we
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cannot avoid is social media. Now social media didn't come along in 2010, although I didn't
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notice on my Twitter feed it said you first joined in 2010, so I'm unfortunately celebrating
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a decade on Twitter. Thank you to those of you who engage with me in a productive way,
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but I gotta say 10 years of just watching people go out there and try and get random people fired
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because they made an imperfect remark. Let's fire Don Cherry. Let's fire the other one, Jess Allen. I
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wasn't on board with that either. Let's get this person named and shamed and everything. You know,
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stop the ride. I want to get off. This thing was supposed to bring people together. Instead,
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it's pushed people apart and just enhanced the toxicity in our lives. 2010, that's when I joined
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Twitter. Facebook, I remember joining it in 2005. It was first made available to Harvard where Mark
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Zuckerberg was of course attending and then a few more universities were given access to it. Yet to
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have actually a university email address like a harvard.edu and in my case at University of Toronto
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is utoronto.ca and if you didn't have that email, you couldn't register for Facebook. So I was one of
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the early ones and it was a really fun time back then. I think it really did bring people closer
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together. Talking about different parties that you go to and oh, here's a house party. Let's check
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that out and then you would meet someone at a party and then you follow out. You go, oh, I'm going to
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message them because I really like that person, a friend to make or someone to ask out on a date
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or what have you and it was like a really cool hip happening thing and then Facebook also kind of
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changed. Everybody got on board. It became a global village. It became a place talking about politics
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and look, I'm so glad that we have this ability, this non-traditional media to talk about politics
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and the things that matter. People who feel they are not represented of course by traditional media
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are people who want to get their own voices out there and you've seen a lot of people who have
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been able to go out and say things that, well, they have something to say. They want to go out
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there. Communities meeting microcosms, whether you're a big hockey fan or Star Trek fan or whatever,
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there's all sorts of online communities out there and that's the positive part of social media and
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that's still happening and that was what predominated though. That was sort of the heavy
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part of it back when it first happened in 2005. MySpace was all about, hey, I got a band. I want
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to share my music with you. I'm this earnest young musician. Listen to my composition and people go,
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oh, great band. Good song, man. Two thumbs up for you. I'll buy your song on iTunes. I don't know if
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iTunes was around then, but you get the point. And then those things, you see less and less of that
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and you see more and more of that toxicity and that let's get them. You know, I've written a few
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times over the years about occasions when I go on Christmas break or when I go on summer break and
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I'm away for like a week or two weeks or I'm out of the country or on the other side of the world
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and I don't have access to high-speed Wi-Fi or I just, you know, I turn the device off. And I feel
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like that's when I become like most myself, most relaxed and content and just happy with the
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whole human experience when you just take a step away and plug out of the madness for a bit. And
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I have people write to me and say, yes, you know, I have the same experience. I think a lot of people
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are thinking along that line. So we love our devices. We love that we can connect like this and talk about
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the issues that matter. But boy, this past decade, social media has really turned in
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to social mania. And I guess the question, I don't have an answer to this at all, is in this next
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decade, are we going to find a way to navigate it more productively without just needing to fire and
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hashtag away anybody who says a slightly off-color remark? Are we going to improve upon that or is it
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going to get worse? I hope it's going to get better. But so far I've seen human nature doesn't
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necessarily fare too well when it gets on there in social media. What do you think? Let me know.