I recently read that nearly 70% of political accounts on Twitter were from other countries. That is an astonishing number.
We are so divided and social media is one of the most influential means of keeping us there. We react and we get angry. We retweet and re-post without regard to where that information came from. No one is looking at facts or solutions. It is scare tactics and anger that keeps us engaged. I am not one for conspiracy theories, but perhaps there are nefarious actors working to keep us scared and divided.
How can we change that? Can we tune out and just stop reacting to every line we read?
Recently, I commented on a post on a local social media site. I got many responses that seemed staged and two that were identical from “different” users. It reminded me that social media is not the place to govern, to discuss or to debate.
We need to find it in ourselves to reach out and close that divide.
Remember when social media was a place to keep up with friends, see photos of their kids, travels and food? Now it is just poison, and we are eating it up and spitting it back out.
Perhaps it’s good to remind people of the old saying, “if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”
Grace Thornton
Centralia
