I was sitting here pondering what social media was for until hit me that base line it is to be more social. Which has become the new base line for socializing for the upcoming and younger generations.
Especially since the pandemic, if you’re not connected online somehow or have some set activity (work, church, or a club) you’re limited in how you can even engage with people.
Go to any public venue and the first thing you will see is people on their phones. Which I don’t see as bad thing but rather a new kind of normal. And it’s harder to break that barrier as stranger danger or the plethora of imaginable threats one can imagine has only exponentially increased.
There is always the internet’s practicality for business ventures or publicity. But more than anything people drift or lurk on platforms without aim. Or find themselves in established groups and identities. Furthering the distance between not only them and their new found communities, but also the people right in front of them. People next to you seem to become more like enemies if there isn’t a pre-established connection to them.
It is now both harder and easier to be connected with people and interact with them as social dynamics grow and change on a global, intercultural, and inter-linguistic scale. People not only become more tribalized, they become more and more individualized. As becoming “authentically and genuinely one’s self” pressures people more and more to stand out against the “status quo” as unique and ground breaking.
Maybe that too is becoming a privilege rather than simply a goal or a given.