2017
May 5 2017
Sometimes I don't feel like moaning, I just feel total despair.
If you are about to negotiate the future of your country for generations ahead, is it really intelligent to adopt a bellicose attitude, almost as if you are already at war with the opposing negotiators. If you are negotiating to leave a group of which you have been a member for over 40 years, is it sensible to lay down your terms. The group has its rules, even in leaving you must abide by them.
And yet, Teresa May, who seems to be hell-bent on becoming the most useless and ignorant PM for many years, is doing precisely as outlined above. You will never get what you would wish for if you demand it. That is a simple fact of life which should be instilled in all children. Possibly this is not done in grammar schools or religious circles. I don't know as I neither attended a grammar school nor had a particularly religious upbringing.
Being reasonable and polite is a virtue. Being aggressive and demanding is not. Understanding the other persons point of view is an important skill in negotiating. Only being interested in blaring out yours is dumb.
Ah well. At least the ignorance and stupidity is strong and, if it continues much longer, can be classed as stable.
May 12 2017
Do you want a PM who is always talking about what his party will do or do you want a PM who is always belittling everyone else but only say how strong and stable she might be? I seriously cannot understand how the answer is not blatant.
May 19 2017
For those of you who have followed these pieces over the last year or so, well done. You will also have some idea of my view of social media, one of the main things being that it is possibly more often than not far more anti-social media. It is an open platform, whatever the owners of these sites may say, for people to insult, humiliate, libel, bully and generally decry anyone, or indeed anything, they want.
Now don't get me wrong, I don't think the sites were devised for that purpose but because of the way they are run there is no way that such behaviour can be policed. There are, as of now, approximately 2 billion regular monthly Facebook users. I am, by the way, only using Facebook as an example. If each user posts once a day there are 2 billion posts each day. Assuming you take a minute to read each post. That is over 33 million hours of reading. Assuming one person works an eight hour day, reading posts non-stop, you would need 4 million people to check each post, making Facebook the world's largest employer.
But we all know that's not how it works. Certain words appearing in posts may be thrown up to those who do check but it is laughable to believe that even 1% of unsuitable posts could be found by Facebook. The same applies to the other four big social media sites, twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat.
In fact I have uploaded a video to YouTube, with backing music composed by me, and been told there was a copyright issue.
The reason I am blogging about this today is that the BBC has reported that a survey has been carried out among young people to see what effect these social media platforms have on their mental health. Young people, aged between 18-24, were asked to score the five sites on issues such as anxiety, depression, loneliness, bullying and body image. It is estimated that 90% of these young people use social media so any effects are far greater on this age group.
The survey found that Instagram had the worst effect when it comes to young people's mental health followed by Snapchat. YouTube had the most positive effect then twitter with Facebook coming out in the middle of the five.
It doesn't take a genius to spot that Instagram and Snapchat are the most image-focused of the five. It is therefore pretty likely that they can make young people feel inadequate about themselves when visually compared to others.
The problem is that social media can also be a positive in young people's lives. It allows them a large degree of self expression, as long as they are not indulging in the anti-social behaviour, and it gives them a public identity. Of course it also keeps them in contact with their friends but I would venture to suggest that many of the followers young people gather on Instagram, for example, are not actual friends. The other problem is that, in the blink of eye, or the upload of a post, what was a good platform for social interaction can become a destructive one.
The clap trap wheeled out by the social media companies was woeful. Keeping Instagram a safe and supportive place for young people was a top priority, the company said but we know they can't do that. It is physically impossible with the large number of users. They also said that they provide tools and information on how to cope with bullying and that they warn users before they view certain content. I would again doubt that these warnings apply to comments posted on a personal Instagram page. I can't imagine a pop-up saying “whoops someone has said something nasty about your picture”. In any case human nature being what it is a warning about the content would probably arouse the curiosity.
The Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) says that "social media may be fuelling a mental health crisis" in young people. How wonderfully vague. They also say that social platforms should flag up heavy social media use and identify users with mental health issues. Unfortunately, in the report I read, they don't say how this should be done. I, for one, fail to see how a social media site can identify someone with a mental health problem when mental health problems are often not identified by so-called experts and professionals. They say a pop-up saying something like you have used social media for “a long time” after a certain period of use might deter but, seriously, if people need to be told that, the problem is far deeper.
Another idea was to have a note to say when photos have been digitally manipulated - for example, they said, fashion brands, celebrities and other advertising organisations could sign up to a voluntary code, allowing a small icon to be displayed on digitally altered photos. Really. I am sure that these brands and celebrities who do alter photos do not want the world to know. Can you see this working?
I may be an old cynic or I may genuinely have serious concerns about how society is developing. I certainly have no answer but it is nice to see some dialogue and also some admission from others that there is a problem with social media.
I may return to this at some later date after a period of non-social reflection.
