I kick around this idea, “is the internet broken?”, in my mind quite a bit.
I’m still working on it but my general thought is “no, but our relationship with social media is”. Social media is not the internet. For a younger generation that probably sounds silly.
What is the internet to me
- A great way to keep up with my friends and family. All of which live on the other side of the country.
- A great way to keep up with my favorite sports teams. All of which are in a different timezone.
- A great way for me to express ideas, through this blog.
- A great tool to always be learning something new. Curiosity is a strength and the internet is my mental gym each and every day.
What the internet isn’t to me
- A place for validation. 99% of words I read online, come from people who do not know who I am.
- A single source of information. No single website is responsible for what I learn about the world. Everything should be fact-checked, just to be sure, before sharing.
- The best place to share criticism. This one is a little hairy because I actually think as a tool, it’s one of the best ways to share critiques. Notice the difference in words.
I lived in a time where “going online” was a thing. I bet most of us don’t even consider that anymore. Maybe if we took a second to remember that we are stepping into cyberspace from time to time, we would treat each other better online. We would find a community that wasn’t based on hating one another.