Social media - connecting us to the future - just like the telephone did

I often compare the telephone's introduction a hundred years ago to the introduction of social media in the last few years.

           1908 Candlestick USA model

There are people who didn't want telephones in their homes. They saw it as a route to social breakdown, wives could talk to strange men, daughters could talk to boyfriends without a chaperone, and workers could tell the secrets of an organisation to competitors if telephones were installed in homes and offices.

And they were right, but they forgot to mention the benefits; the ability to call an ambulance to come and save your life, to speak to your dying father on another continent, to get an order that would save your business.

Similarly people resist social media as they say it takes too much time, is filled with stupid content and that they prefer editors to decide what the news is, rather than picking their own stories to read.

And undoubtedly all this is true. In a hundred years these things will come to pass (if not sooner), but the benefits, getting health advice from others that could save your life, engaging your dying dad in a video hangout and getting orders that will save your business, will all happen too.

Social media is simply another communication tool. It is up to is what we do with it.

To anyone who resists social media, just say this; I suppose you would have been against the telephone too!