Social Media Breaks: Why it’s good.
It doesn’t take much for Americans to feel the divide more than ever, gridlocked over social issues, race, gender, and the economy. The media plays a massive role, tugging at people’s emotions and baiting belief systems. Social media has become the public square of our generation. While being very convenient and quite entertaining, there are some drawbacks. How we receive and consume, news has changed over the four centuries, which may play a part in the social divide.
The evolution of media
- 1600’s – telegrams, mules, horses, boats, ship
- 1700’s – newspapers were delivered via horse, boat, ship
- 1827- 1893 – newspapers delivered via trains, cars
- 1899 – news could now be broadcast via radio
- 1951 – most Americans owned a TV, and the first televised news network was NBC
- 1980’s CNN was the first to televise news 24 hours a day
- 2000 – smartphones & social media became a new platform for news to be delivered
The progression of technology has changed how we receive the news; what used to take about 14 days, we can now receive every minute. This has become a primary income-generating tool for large news networks to the ordinary person. The more “they,’ can tug on our emotions and deliver dramatic scenes, the more we watch. Sound bites can be extracted using these current media platforms and returned to the viewer with partial information. We have traded being uninformed for misinformed, and the truth is lost in the process.
Is constant news consumption necessary?
Things that were once simple have become complex, and confusion is taking the front-row seat. All of a sudden, we are all policymakers and lawmakers based on the limited information we know. Thomas Henry David Thoreau, the author of Walden Pond, a book on simple living written back in 1854, said if you read one newspaper, you have read them all.
“If we read of one man robbed, murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blew up…we may never read of another. One is enough. We may find such news in newspapers, but we would also be wise to seek it elsewhere. Ears to the wind, eyes on our books, critical minds controlling them both, only then can we drain the flood of distortions and stand on the hard bottom of the truth.” -Thoreau
Why books provide better insight
I have concluded that books are the source of knowledge and ideas; the media winds me up. If I shut all media sources off and go about my day, I feel connected to people who are not divided between two parties. Sometimes it is good to give it a break and not consume the news; I have never missed anything worth noting or necessary for safety, such as preparing for a storm by not watching the news.
Thomas Sowell said, “we transfer knowledge and ideas through books, not news.” Books are a permanent form of knowledge so that knowledge from past generations can be passed on to future generations: reading a book is time travel. Nothing new is presented to us today; it has all been tried and lived out. Books are the best resource for knowing what has worked and has yet to work.
Insource Your Research
When it is time to cast our vote should we choose to exercise that right, it’s then a good time to research the nominated candidates, focusing on what they have done and their experience in their field. Higher education credentials add much value but are not nearly as important as real-life experience. The simplicity of ignoring the rhetoric rings as accurate today as it did back in the 1800s, as Thoreau noted.
The persuasive, emotional tactics used to persuade us may have little to do with the truth and much with personal gain. “The only person who can truly persuade you is yourself. You must turn the issues over in your mind at leisure, consider the many arguments, let them simmer, and turn your preferences into convictions after a long time.” ~ Milton Freeman
Final Thoughts
We have outsourced almost everything to the media demagogues, including the pursuit of happiness, and forgotten how to think and rationalize for ourselves. Fundamental “truths,” regardless of feeling, are still “truths”; as Justice Clarence Thomas said, “North with always be North.” These fundamental truths cannot be rewritten for humanity, and applying simplicity to many of the topics we face today would lead to less social friction. Sometimes it’s good to take a break, no news, no politics; it is where we may find our true beliefs and be less enticed to believe things that move us emotionally.
Photo by Giorgio Trovato