Baby Boomers and the Social Media Battleground
In the 1960s there was a battle going on between the People who wanted to tell people what to do and the People who wanted to be Free.
Baby Boomers thought in the 70s that we had found a balance between the two sides.
40 years later the battle is happening on the web and social media is just part of the battlefield.
The number of both types of people, the ones who want to tell people what to do and the ones who want to be free, are growing on the web and it is difficult to balance the two types.
So in social media terms the people who want to be free seem to fall into several categories. These include:
- The creeps and stalkers – the people for whom social media is an ideal way to blast people with needless information, find people to abuse or prey upon.
- These are the bullies of cyberspace who feel they have the right to say whatever they want to whomever they want and to pass on private information or steal private information for their own pleasure or benefit
- But there is also a group of people who are getting to have their voice heard – people like Susan Boyle, Roberta Budvietas, Sandi Krakowski and thousands of others who would not be heard without social media and the viral effect
Those who want to tell people what to do include:
- The politicians who want us to vote for them
- Movie stars, sports figures and other “famous” people who want their fans to keep following and buying their offerings
- News and media people who continue to tell us their side of the story.
- Company PR machines who want us to think about their benefits and buy their product of service
- People who want to make money by creating fear of loss if you don’t buy this product or service NOW.
Both groups have been around for a long time. Slogan think and speak is not a current media creation but what technology allows is a faster and easier spread of the message to more and more people who are less and less prepared to cope with the massive amount of information, choice and options available.
Bottom line – the balance needs restoring and the question I have is will the Baby Boomers, who have done it before, take up the challenge and help restore the balance of information again or are they too tired, too overwhelmed and too confused to understand that there is nothing new just a new delivery mechanism for the information that we rejected 40 and 50 years ago.
Roberta is a keynote speaker, facilitator and mentor. You can find her through http://www.budvietas.com which links to her blogs, articles, ebooks and speaking.
Posted in Social Networking. Tags: celebrities, social media ethics, viral
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