Learning to THINK

With 2015 nearly upon us, I’ve been thinking back on the past year, and I have to say, social media really bummed me out in 2014.

I don’t think it was any one particular thing, rather it was the year saw many less-than-stellar online practices reach new levels of prevalence, and acceptance, across all forms of online media. Clickbait, selfies, smear campaigns, hoaxes, hacks, leaks, hashtag slacktivism… nothing entirely new reared its head in 2014, but these annoying bits and pieces that were for a long time nearer the fringes of our online experience somehow pushed there way into the center of it. The result, at least for the last few months, was me seriously throttling back my engagement with most forms of online media. And I wasn’t alone.

But we can do better than this. We can make the internet a positive environment again. In order to do so, however, we have to take responsibility of what we click and what we post. We’ve let bad habits become standard practice, and it’s time for an intervention.