In 2016, I met my best friend for the first time. In 2016, I entered a new phase. 2016 was my best year – whether it’s true or not, let’s just follow the trend. According to social media posts, people are missing 2016, so let me join too and say something I miss about 2016. The person may not even remember anything about 2016 ooh. See how social media controls us? There’s still more.
I’ve just been seeing the 2016 throwback pictures trend on social media with people saying what 2016 was for them, and some using the tagline “2026 is the new 2016”.
I’m guessing that not all of us may agree with it, but we would go ahead and use it in our posts anyway because many people are using it. We agree online because people are already supporting it. Most times we don’t make decisions on our own. We think we do, but we don’t. Our decisions are not from us, they are from the majority.
You know how you wake up, and you have a list of things you want to do, or there are things you’ve decided not to do, and somewhere along the way, you see people talking about those things, doing those things, you will now join them? That’s how it is with social media. In fact, it’s even more with social media because people wey dey there, plenty.
Before you argue, close your eyes for a minute, and try to recall all the times you changed your mind to go with the “flow”, the times you shifted your schedule, your plans, the times you changed your mindset within seconds, so that you will not be odd. Make e no be like say you no follow.
We have those moments. Not many people really like to be odd, or not belong.
I think this way about something, I start talking with people, and all of them have another thought different from mine. At that point, what we do 99.9% of the time is to keep quiet about what we think, or even change our mind so all of us will “agree”.
I’m not saying that everytime you change your mind to agree with others it’s bad, no, sometimes we are wrong, and when we see or hear the right thing, we should take it. It’s part of learning.
What I’m talking about is something that you don’t like or are not comfortable with, or you’ve never thought of, and then you see people doing that thing or hear people talk about that thing – it then begins to get your attention.
A lot of times we don’t really look inside us to see if this thing is actually okay with you. Some of us now, if they ask you what you like, what you stand for, what you cannot do, even what you believe, we don’t know.
Let’s look at the throwback picture trend again; if we are honest with ourselves, we’ll realize that the reason you posted your own pictures is because it’s trending, because many people are doing it, maybe because we saw famous people join. Not that you planned it. Not that it has been on your mind. That’s exactly what I’m talking about!
This is in line with what research says. Semra Gunduc in his research report explained that the way social media networks work means that many people reposting a trend can bring many others into agreement even if they weren’t thinking about it deeply at first.
Our opinions, our actions and even reactions to things, are shaped by social media. We go to social media for almost everything we need.
That’s also how many of us join discussions that we don’t know how it started. They are dragging someone online, we join without knowing the full story. Many people are supporting something, we join, and we don’t know what the thing is really about.
There is something that we normally do. Before we comment on any post, we look at the comment section to know what people are saying, we look at the number of reactions – likes, shares. By the time we are done, our original thought or opinion is gone.
We see something on social media, and we believe it, and start sharing. Because the person that posted it is shouting, “share this video”, you start sharing, most times without considering if that post or video is worth sharing. We don’t know how true it is, but for many of us, once it’s on social media, we take it.
Many times, people are just posting what they think and how they feel, not facts. You must not think and feel like them. We need to be able to weigh what we take from social media.
Taking everything you see there is a problem because we stop being ourselves. It’s a problem because we can go around spreading false information and they can be dangerous.
Results from PUBMED research shows that false information on health is high on social media. Smoking, drugs, and other health related issues have so much false information on Twitter, and on other social media. See what we’re talking about?
The first step is to be aware.
Now we know that this happens to us on social media, and we have accepted that it is true. We are conscious of it now.
The next step is to begin to protect ourselves.
Anytime a challenge on social media goes viral, pause and think about it first to be sure. Anytime somebody posts something, and there are likes, shares, comments that are in support, wait first, and ask questions. Who is this person? Are they trustworthy? What’s the full story? Don’t just join. Don’t just agree.
Before you tap share, before you like, before you use the information, ask yourself:Is this really my opinion, or is it just loud? Is this information correct? Is this the right person to give this kind of information?
I think it’s not too late to say happy new year