I know what you’re probably thinking: social media has brought you this post. What right do I have to complain about it? I understand that, believe me. However, I think this needs to be said. 

The digital age has brought many wonderful things with it. We have the ability to have video conversations from across the globe, stream film and television online, and many more. However, I think that most people will agree that one of the biggest developments is social media. You all know what I’m referring to: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, MySpace, Snapchat, Pinterest, to name a few. These platforms play a significant role in our daily lives for many reasons. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram allow businesses to advertise their services and increase their following for free. They allow people to keep in contact with friends and relatives who are geographically separated. 

However, there is a dark side to social media. Platforms like these are a haven for cyber stalkers, cyber bullies, and vigilante behaviour. While these are the extremes, others we see every day. Nowadays you can almost create social media stereotypes from one’s personality. I’ve compiled a list of all the different kinds of social media users (or SMU’s).

1. The oversharer: The person who posts their every daily activity and every waking thought, often exceeding 10 posts a day. 
2. The angry SMU with no literacy skills: The person who rants and raves about everything wrong with their life, but can’t write seperate sentences or spell simple words like “you’re”, “their” or “too”. 
3. The highly intelligent SMU: This particular user creates satirical politic related posts, and witty commentary about life in general. These people tend to be much more active during significant political debates.
4. The busybody: These SMU’s might not make many posts, but will like and comment on everyone else’s, and use their social media account to keep up with the latest goss. 
5. The attention seeker: This SMU’s profile consists mainly of vain selfies. We’ve all seen the sort of posts that these people put up. When they’re down, they put up a vague post indicating that they want to hurt themselves, in order for everyone to pry and ask what is wrong. When they have an announcement, they make a vague post so that everyone will pry, but they won’t give the secret away. If you’re lucky, you might get a “PM me, and I’ll tell you ;)”.
6. The down to Earth SMU: These are the least irritating kind of SMU. These might have a slight mix of a few different types of SMU in them, but they mainly post happy shots of their friends and family, maybe first day shots of their children, always accompanied with captions like, “Life is good”.
7. The artist: These SMU’s specialise in something. It could be photography, music, writing, drawing, architecture, the list goes on. These people are often quite intelligent, and most of their posts will relate to their nominated field. For example, a travelling photographer will post photos of places they’ve been around the world, using cool filters and fantastic camera angles. The musician might post YouTube clips of themselves singing, and so on.
8. The businessman: This user simply uses their account to further their business, and will only post advertisements to improve their following. 
9. The humanitarian: This SMU will mainly post things related to helping people or animals. Much of their wall will be made up of things they’ve shared from other official organisations. For example, bushfire warnings from 7 News, petitions to save the whales, or advertisements like missing person posters.
10. The video blogger: This SMU might have several thousand followers, most of whom they do not know. They will post video diaries of themselves maybe driving as they pour their heart out. Viewers might comment while it is live and the SMU will respond on air.
11. The celebrity SMU: This SMU can afford to pay a professional to manage each of their different social media platforms. Each post is related to their specialised field, and is tailored for each different social media platform, ie hashtags, symbols, emoji’s, etc.
12. The paranoid privacy obsessed user: This user doesn’t have a profile picture, and will often use an alias rather than their real name. They have a rigid approval process when accepting friend requests, and will rarely make posts, like or comment on other people’s posts, and will untag themselves should their friends tag them in an event.
13. The SMU who is never on: This person has an active account, but only checks it every few months, if that. The only reason they have signed up is to keep in touch with people they never see. These are usually the people who like and comment on your photos and posts that are over a year old.
14. The non SMU: This person is computer illiterate. They do not have a social media account, and in fact probably don’t own a computer, or a smart phone. This person is set in their ways and keeps in contact with their friends and family the old fashioned way.
15. The troll: This user simply makes offensive comments on public posts to bait their users into responding. The troll will generally use an alias and have no profile picture. 

Have I missed any? Feel free to comment at the bottom of the page. 

Speaking personally, I can identify as an artist, down to Earth and businessman SMU. My mother will probably tell you I’ve been the oversharer a bit in my time though!

What sort of SMU are you? Share it in the comments box at the bottom of the page.

Recently, I’ve noticed an enormous breakdown in the quality of social media. During the same sex marriage plebiscite last year, it was impossible to miss a post about it, followed by thousands of arguments in the comment section on what people should or shouldn’t be voting.

Even a simple ad by Coles promoting their loyalty program Flybuys was bombarded by users complaining about how little they receive from the program, only to then complain about the generic responses generated by the Flybuys team on the page. I could list many more examples, but we don’t have all day. 

Long story short, I am asking you: how did we get into this mess? How does something as simple as tagging someone, commenting on a post, or not doing these things, make or break friendships? How did it get to the point where our social media presence helps potential employers decide whether or not to give us a job?

Have you ever considered going social media free for a week? For many of us, the idea is absurd. What would we do with ourselves? 

1. We would have more time on our hands. We could get more studying done, more housework done, more chores done.
2. We could rekindle long lost friendships with a letter or a phone call.
3. We could go out for dinner and chat without the interruption of status updates, and taking photographs of our food. 
4. We could go on holidays and take selfies and photographs of the scenery, knowing that they will simply be printed and placed in a photo album.
5. We could enjoy the company of the people we love, without the need to share superficial statuses for people we don’t really know or like. We could talk to people face to face in real time. We could not be distracted by the outside world through cyberspace.

What do you think? Are these speculative outcomes near the truth? Do you think you could see some positive results by going back to basics? 

Be sure to comment at the bottom of the page.