BY ERICA GUSTAFSON, OPINION EDITOR
There are many upperclassmen here at St. Bonaventure University who are older than most major social media platforms. Facebook was born in 2004, Twitter in 2006, Instagram in 2010 and Snapchat made its way in 2011. Though these are commonly referred to as sites that grew up with our generation, they are younger than we are. With that being said, they have boomed in such a short amount of time with our constant, regular use of modern technologies.
This all leads to the point that people on social media platforms today are constantly being updated every moment of the day. Notifications set off phones constantly throughout the 24 hour day as people see articles and posts about sports, weather, celebrities, music and so many more. One of the biggest controversial subjects to see updates on is political topics of interest and our government.
Now, I can’t speak for everyone else, but I don’t mind being updated to an extent. It can be pretty handy that I don’t need to search for hours through a book to find one word that can answer my question. It is also very helpful, especially throughout a pandemic, that we are able to stay connected to one another and important updates through the technologies that we use.
However, this is not always one big blessing. There are downsides to this constant updating from multiple sites. Apart from the possibility of “news” information potentially being false information, the forceful intake of information every single day can be overwhelming.
Specifically, when it comes to politics, many people do not wish to be constantly bombarded with it every hour of every day. I fall within that group of people. It is good to stay informed about what is happening in our government and what is being done by our politicians. However, that doesn’t mean that we need to hear our phones go off every other second because of it.
It is not necessary that a person is updated each minute because one politician made a video bashing the views, beliefs or actions of another to get a “leg up.” It is not necessary that we get messages constantly claiming how people think a specific politician is idiotic and needs to drop out of government altogether. These things do not need to be known as soon as possible. We all know that there will never be a time when every person agrees on a specific politician, and that is okay. There is no point in constantly reading through thousands of posts foolishly ranting on about things that don’t add any type of informative value to the conversation.
In all honesty, this is a reason why many people are annoyed, irritated and overall avoidant of many political conversations. People are not always eager to participate in conversations about certain topics when political topics and views are continually being forced on them over and over again.
This is a similar way as to why many people don’t like talking about religion in-depth, whether it is someone else’s or their own practices. I can not give one example of someone who likes having another religion continually being shoved down their throat, and then wanting to practice or have a civil conversation about it.
It is not bad to talk about politics, but I understand people’s frustration as it is constantly being shoved down our throats.
