Social media is bad for you

With the world going to hell in a hand cart and a world wide toilet roll shortage imminent , it might be worth considering the major cause. Chances are you have popped in here after using the main cause, the main bringer of doom and gloom, social media. Yes I use it but in my defence I take 90 percent of it as rubbish. Its mainly for games, music and looking at nice pictures.

With the coming plague its amazing how many people believe some of the crap about cures and prevention. Often ignoring the experts to check what a housewife with google thinks. No gargling salt water wont help, using toothpaste that turns your skin blue doesn't work and praying to a con man preacher wont work. I also believe the panic buying of loo roll is down to the internet. The first place I saw this happen was Australia and in no time it was everywhere. ironic then that my local supermarket has no toilet roll but has loads of toilet cleaner. Slight contradiction there folks.

There has been so much rubbish believed and shared its sometimes hard to notice reality. The clues are to choose sources, look where the things are shared from and check the person sharing. Never ever buy anything sold on Facebook etc unless through their market place. My page is full of people selling t-shirts from various bands, all obvious fakes. The trick is to see if the likes are many times higher then the comments. The con men buy likes and think it makes the products more likely to sell.

With the virus there has been fake news to go with fake stories to go with fake everything else. Anyone hear how wonderful Cristiano Ronaldo was by turning his hotels in to make shift hospitals, not true. Stories everywhere that there was a deliberate release of this man made virus. Chemical warfare to poison the world, no I didn't think so either and I love conspiracy theories.

With so many people soon to be locked up at home maybe its time to use social media less and not more. Talk to your family instead of message, read books instead of have someone read to you and learn things from the world rather then from google. Introduce your kids to time before social media, board games and the like. Make it into a history lesson and make it fun for a bit. Learn to cook from scratch with limited food supplies and teach them how their grandparents live.

While I am moaning now for a pointer on a few other things. While its great to count down to your holidays, send pictures and comment on every ice cream there's a very salient point here. It tells everyone when your due to leave your house empty and then shows everyone exactly when your not there. Come to that I always think those doorbells with camera feed to your phone does the same. You tell the bad guy please go away, he says make me, and you say I cant because I am on holiday.

The other thing that worries me and I avoid is the constant this person is a crook or paedophile or whatever, please share . For a start you never know if the accusations are true unless photographic proof is made avaidible. Secondly in many cases having a story spread so widely could affect a trial as a jury pool could be tainted by information shared.

So please people think before you post and before you share, we recently lost a much loved celebrity in the uk who took her own life because of abuse online following a small indiscretion. A fair bit started on media sources and then got shared and shared. Nobody who shared knew the truth but decided to pass it on and also comment on her guilt.

Its a dangerous place, tread carefully.