Monday, March 14, 2016

Are You Using or Utilizing The Digital Age?


There are a lot of reasons not to hate social media. At first my opinion had been that social media is tearing down society, interpersonal relationships and religion but perhaps I am wrong. Thinking about these concepts has made me take a closer look at the facts.


Perhaps we don’t need to change social media but we need to let social media change us. We as a society need to use social media to make public changes. We can try to pin for the past and destroy the social media we have created or we can change it into something that is positive.

On my mission I was shocked to learn that the two most common uses for a computer are, first pornography and second family history. The first is commonly seen as very bad and the second a very good, so thus you can see the digital war between what is good and what is not good. This concept was later reiterated in a personal address by Elder Ballard a leader in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Thus it can be seen that the effects of the digital age can be both very good and very bad.





We need to be the warrior for the right side. This side does not only apply to Family History work but to the use of social media in general.

I believe that social media can be a great help to society. We are constantly trying to fight against social media and destroy it but in reality there is no destroying this wonderful thing we have created, rather let us embrace! Let us use it for good rather than bad

Like in the show Hercules, Trying to fight social media is like trying to cut the heads off of the monster. You cut of one bad head and three grow in its place. Rather than cutting of heads let us focus on utilizing the positive characteristics of digital use. Let us tame the dragon.


So how do we do that? How do we tame the beast? Perhaps metaphorically the beast is already being tamed. In lots of cases social media is being used very well. If you think about it, there are many positive uses of social media. For example now I am personally using a digital app to learn Spanish and this is just one of the million positive uses of the digital age.


 I would ask that we try to limit our personal mind-numbing use of enriching media use. Perhaps you watch YouTube once a week rather than every other day or you switch your YouTube time with time posting about what you learned in you English class. When we are focusing on the good we can reach people in a different way and make social media work for us rather than against us.


For example on my mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints I learned the effects of positive use of social media. Every month we had a day dedicated to going out with members of the church, doing service and taking pictures of our activities to post on their social websites. These pictures were to inspire others to learn more about God, do service of their own, or just gain an insight into the church.
Because of the digital age we now have the ability to reach outside our community and even our country. We have the chance to make a difference
Statistically one post has the potential to reach Thousands of people. The average face book user has 338 friends. After posting your picture your friends can then repost the message making it possible for your single message to reach as many as 114,244 people.
 Just yesterday I saw a single post that was posted by several of my Face Book friends. These friends were not friends with each other on face book which means that they both received the original post from someone else. This shows how easy it is for something to go viral, for something to be shared and re-shared and re-shared. Regardless, even if no one re-hared your post, it still reached at least 338 people! These numbers are ridiculously high. Social media and digital use has the ability to reach people far beyond our physical reach.


Let’s use this aspect of the digital age to make a difference. What will you post today to start making a positive influence on the world? 

3 comments:

  1. Your article poses an interesting question: is the internet using you, or are you using it? With some more research I think your article can be more persuasive. You introduce the idea well with the two most common uses of the internet, but lose me with an almost preachy-natured argument.

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  2. I agree with getting a bit lost, despite the great idea that social media can be good. (How's that for "dividing an educated audience?" I felt like there may have been too many pictures, and they chopped it up enough that it was hard to keep following.

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  3. Love this post. Really clever hercules analogy!

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