Is Social Media Making Humans Behaving like Idiots?

I always complain that people who drive erratically in order to gain one or two minutes of their life only to waste it on using Facebook.

It may not the whole truth but it is most possible.

Anyone with a Facebook account can attest to this - one can spend hours just browsing through out-of-focus snaps (in another words, photos that should never have been published) or wonder why your friend never responded to your comments on their status updates. All done while facing a devise, instead of another human being.

Yet they called this a social network, most of the time I don't see anything social about it; in fact, it should be renamed as anti-social network.

I dare say most people have no clue, even to the point of almost naive, with online security when they sign up for social networks like Facebook, assuming the names in their Friend List are really friends but in reality just a sugar-coated label. Armed with this false sense of security, many let their guards down and often revealed too much information, forgetting sometimes these information can pass onto the wrong hands, like bullies, opportunist thieves, sex predators and anyone with unkind intentions.

Facebook has been mentioned in some of the teenage bully cases here in Australia, how the victims having not only to endure taunting at school, but to have this anti-social behaviour follow them to the safety of their own homes, when they logon to Facebook. The ones I have heard about resulted in the teens taking their own lives, makes me wonder how many out there are suffering in silence?

If social media is used as a platform for idiotic anti-social group behaviour, what is so social about this networking?

When told, many adults would wave their hands in the air saying the kids are just having fun, it is normal or kids are just being kids, does it imply that ridiculing someone without face-to-face contact is more acceptable?

I think not.

Social media is also the perfect platform for narcissists, everyone has at least one on their Facebook Friend List - the person who couldn't stop broadcasting information about themselves, usually by means of posting photos and status updates. I agree these people already exist in our society but social media magnifies this display like a loud speaker, I worry that people who read and see these display on social media and think it is as a perfectly acceptable normal everyday behaviour.

Narcissism is not quite an idiotic anti-social behaviour but it can be when everybody develop this me first and me want everything outlook, the sense of community and working together as one will be lost.

I accept that social media is not going to go away any time soon but I do hope that creators of social media acknowledge that they have a social responsibility to the public - to provide education on privacy and security matters, as well as sternly reminding the public to use the platform as a responsible and decent human being. As an ex-Facebook user, I hope to see that people realise that social media is an artificial environment which cannot be replaced by the warmth and genuineness of direct one-to-one human contact.