RE: The Most Upsetting Consequence Of Social Media
Social media is whatever you make of it. Using social media I discovered the story of a man who has serious health problems and needs a cancer screening, and also received an eviction notice recently because times are hard, and money is short. I was able to contribute toward his GoFundMe campaign, and despite a goal of only $10k, the power of social media brought people together and last I checked we'd put together over $124,000 for this man.
I am proud of that.
Privacy is a non-issue as social media in entirely voluntary. You can lie about all those things you mentioned, and in many cases just not answer, or avoid sites all together.
Using social media to complain about social media, is as you pointed out, an interesting paradox. It makes the entire criticism confusing in and of itself...
I agree that "social media is whatever you make of it", but only to a certain extent. I totally agree, though, that you can make a lot of good stuff here, apart from looking for validation.
My point was - and I still keep it - the confusion we make between our social media circle of friends, and reality. These are two different worlds. Very different. It gets obvious every time we have a big event like, for instance, elections. Half of the people are complaining that "they didn't see that coming" and that the world will collapse. It won't. Maybe their social media world, but the real world will keep going on.