secret 2: Relax (Photo credit: amysphere)
The other day, one of my favorite Facebook Fan Pages posted the following quote from Mashable’s CEO and founder, Pete Cashmore: “Privacy is dead, and social media holds the smoking gun.”
This statement bothers me. It bothers me because it attributes motives to the wrong culprit.
I often say that social media does not have a mind of its own. It is a concept invented by people. A concept that many have used as an excuse to evade their responsibilities.
You can only give up your privacy if you want to. After all, no one has ever forced you to share your personal information or every bit of your life on Facebook or Twitter.
“We all have a responsibility as social media users to understand that, when we reveal everything about ourselves… we are impoverishing ourselves. We are taking away the best part of ourselves… the internal mystery of what it requires to build personality.” - Andrew Keen
Of course, there is nothing wrong with telling the world about our journeys. But we should also remember that the world is not our personal diary. Not everything is good or appropriate to publish.
The problem is that we have talked ourselves into believing that chit chat is better than silence, that quantity is better than quality.
After all, silence can be deafening. It forces us to face our fears, to think differently. The new perspectives and ideas that it allows us to share can change the status quo, and help create better relationships with people around us.
Now, my question is: Do we really want that?