Eleven months ago Facebook, the one site that seems to be the center of every college student’s life, went public on the New York Stock Exchange.
Prior to the event people went crazy, after all who wouldn’t be? One of the world’s youngest billionaires was going to sell stake in his company that at times seems to be the center of the world.
Moments after opening the stock plummeted and by September Facebook lost more than half of its value due to the fact that investors saw the company as overvalued and a joke in the investment world. So what’s the point of knowing this?
The point is that we shouldn’t take social media too seriously.
Because what is social media these days? Here’s my philosophy, and keep in mind if you’re one of my few friends on Facebook, this analysis doesn’t apply to you.
Today’s generation isn’t generation X or generation Z; today’s generation is the Facebook generation, the twitter generation the generation that wants to be acknowledged.
Instead of being occupied with the real world and their overpriced educations, girls browse their Facebook newsfeeds to see who can make the cutest duck face while others who lack the self-confidence to convince themselves that they’re actually beautiful make albums filled with photos of their cleavage and fake smiles, in hopes that their friends will later comment to tell them they’re actually beautiful.
Boys on the other hand either show photos of themselves shirtless on a beach with beer or socializing at a party with beer. Because after all employers, what’s not to love about photos with excessive amounts of beer? If these people are the future of our society then go ahead and opt me out of a retirement home now.
So why can’t the world get a grip? It seems that every day our world is changed by the actions on Twitter or Facebook. Just yesterday the Associated Press was hacked releasing a Twitter feed that claimed there was an attack on the White House, and for a few minutes there was a panic. But Is this what the world has come to? Have Twitter and Facebook become accepted mediums to inform and receive news?
Now I’m not here to shun Social Media as pointless or detrimental to society. Deep down I think the contrary. Social media has the tremendous power of good when exercised properly.
Sites like LinkedIn continue to create a professional front for prospective individuals to seek higher opportunities. When you consider sites like Facebook the worlds shrink. You go on it to vent about your problems and maybe even snap a photo, and at the end of the day you have a few friends that empathize with you.
So until Social media provides tangible products like Google’s operating systems or Apples IPhone’s we can’t take them too seriously whether it’s in our financial markets or our social lives. But we can harness its power, and alongside that we should be able to appreciate the diversity without being judged, because what’s not to like about beer?
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