The Positives of a Connected World

Social media gets a bad rap, with good reason. It does feel often like it has taken over our lives. It has definitely changed the landscape of parenting and how our children experience life. But is it all bad? I don’t think so.

86.1% of the world’s population is active on social media when looking at eligible audiences aged 18+ years. Out of 8.12 billion people in the world, 63.7% of the population use social networks, regardless of age or internet access. Source

That is a lot of people! It is a lot of people that you and I have access to. Of course there are bound to be problems and issues when you connect that many people who can interact anonymously. There is, also, a lot of space for good.

I joined Twitter back in the day when there were literally a few thousand of us on the platform. We all followed each other and we genuinely loved being on the platform – we chatted all day, shared the every day mundane minutiae of our lives – it was a vibe. Because social media was still fairly new and many of us came from an era of in person connections, we used the platform to create in person meet ups and in doing so created a small community, many of these connections have lasted years.

It was during one of these #tweetups that I met my husband, we had our first conversation after the event on Twitter. Social media played an instrumental part in our paths crossing.

Almost two years I received an email as HarassedMom. It was from a mom who was now also homeschooling who was looking for friends for her son and our boys were the same age. She found me because we had been following each other for years on Twitter. I then discovered that she was the person who organised the 27 Dinners in those early days of Twitter – David and I attended a few of those events but Eve and I never actually connected, we just kept following each other. Our boys have no become firm friends as have Eve and I – our weekly coffee dates are the highlight of my week and a big part of the reason I finally pulled the trigger on starting this site.

While I was visiting Kiara in Cape Town recently I discovered that she played an online game every day with her friend Emily – sometimes they were both in the flat and other times they would do it from where ever they were at the time. It was a fun way for them to connect. When I got home I told Jack and Emma about this. They now login together when they can and play a few rounds of the game. It is a silly where you dress up characters and they vote on who looks the best. But the actual game doesn’t matter – it is the fact that the 3 of them are able to connect and do something together without actually being together.

I shared an Instagram post today about the woman I have met online and how they have shaped my life.

The dangers of social media are real but there are also so many positives. It can be a powerful place to nurture real connections with real people.

“Social media is reducing social barriers. It connects people on the strength of human values, not identities.” Amit Ray