I attend a government clinic regularly. Waiting in line (which if you've never been is a loooooong line, and usually there are many, many, many lines that need to be survived, which takes very many hours. I often have the most profound conversations in these queues with my fellow patients (and please feel free to take both meanings to the word).
One jumps to mind when reading this: The effect of social media on people. The conversation started innocently enough. How people are so concerned with their online social life, they neglect their real social life. How their happiness is connected to their "likes".
We then moved onto politics (as often happens in South Africa) and my queue mate pointed out, quite rightly so, how social media behaves is unfair on the children of the politicians concerned. The politicians are adults, and know what they signed up for. Less so their children. They still need to attend school with other children, and we all know how cruel children can be.
We moved forward to the dangers of social media, especially for those with weaker minds. Anyone struggling with depression, or any sort of need to be socially accepted, should stay away from social media completely.
My queue mate was especially vehement on Twitter being the most evil platform of them all. She told me the sad story of a woman who committed suicide after bad things were said about her during a time when she was already struggling with mental health, and then she read "bad things" said about her concert.
I'm sure we all know some sort of story about a suicide directly related to cyber-bullying. It's become so common it even has it's own term!
Much is joked about the internet trolls, and how brave they can be in the face of online anonymity.
I suppose the best we can do is to be the change we wish to see. Report bullies, report trolls, and be supporting to people online. In short, to tweet others as you would like to be tweeted.
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