Digital Down Low: We are in an unprecedented era of social media and politics

As technology increases, culture changes. Within just the past 50 years, technology has changed and developed so rapidly that culture has barely had the chance to catch up at points. We have now arrived at a place in time where the President of the United States primarily uses Twitter to reach his fans, followers and other users of the site.

This is not necessarily unhealthy. Social media has allowed information to be exchanged incredibly rapidly and at a constantly increasing rate. Anything someone discovers on the other side of the world can almost be instantly be accessed by any of us with just a phone. Information is becoming more available to us every second, and we are always gaining new opportunities to learn something.

However, the internet also gives us an immense amount of control over what we share, like and just see. The ability we have to generally control what kind of content we consume can become dangerous.

To a lot of people, social media is an echo chamber. What some people want is just to go online and talk to people who agree with them. Now, if you’re regularly in a high-stress environment with lots of people who disagree with you and consistently provide you with reasons why, then maybe this is exactly what you need. However, for those of us who already live in an echo chamber, this might not be the best formula for gaining knowledge. In fact, if we are so inclined, we can completely ignore all the countless pages of information that we could otherwise be gaining.

It’s easy to ignore things like climate change, world hunger, the effects of aggression on other countries and social issues. If we plug our ears, stick around people who agree with us and filter out all the posts on social media that oppose our opinions or only follow people who agree with us on everything, nothing will ever change. This endless digital stream of knowledge will be rendered useless by many people, and many of them are okay with that. That is not discourse.

Gaining new knowledge and having productive discourse is important. Striving to block it out not only harms you as an individual — it has an enormous impact on the world around us. It’s easy to ignore information. It’s less easy to make an impact on the world that actually means something based upon the information you gained. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t all be doing our best.

Marco Omta is a sophomore studying music production. Please note that the views and opinions of the columnists do not reflect those of The Post. Who do you follow on Twitter? Email Marco at mo183714@ohio.edu.