Is Social Media a Necessary Evil?

Many commentators have been ringing the death-knell of email because they see the onward surge of new social media sites eventually taking over as the preferred communications channel of choice. But for all those who champion this new wave of social interaction and see it as the best thing to happen to the Internet since YouTube, there are many who see it as a scourge that should be regulated.

Indeed, the Chinese have been regulating Internet usage for years (see the Great Firewall of China), but now there are calls from even Western countries to curb its use and many see it as damaging and not the freedom-giving liberation providing brave new world we all envisaged.

Recently there have been calls from religious leaders for parents to make sure their children aren’t being dragged into all sorts of on-line shenanigans and commenting that it is actually stunting kid’s social awareness. That would be the ultimate insult, really; that social networks have the effect of limiting social interactions would surely be seen as a big ‘fail’.

But social networking is here to stay and stay it will because it provides an easy route to content and knowledge and above all else, those are the two things that people want. Moreover, they’re the two things that all the automated software that scours the Internet wants. For example, the structured way in which social networking sites are created is a boon for search engines like Google who’s algorithm seems to be geared towards counting how many of these sites have content and links pointing to all of our sites.

Social networking may be seen by some to be a ‘bad thing’ and it may indeed cause some people to spend more time in front of the computer than would be considered ‘healthy’, but on the plus side it does break down barriers and provide interactions between completely disparate cultures that otherwise wouldn’t have every communicated.

So in answer to the question, the ‘social’ aspect of the web is not only necessary, it is not ‘evil’. It may sometimes hold a magnifying glass to those who would use it for evil, but it is not evil in itself; it is simply a conduit through which the richness of human communication can be routed be it good or bad.