Social media is a Beast. Like every communications tool that has come before, whether it’s the printing press, telegraph, telephone, radio or television, it is powerful and hungry. The Beast requires everyone to take notice, to engage, and to constantly feed it attention and content. It provides a platform to communicate with millions of people all over the world. It has the power to change minds, societies and economies, but it is important to understand that a Beast is, at heart, a wild animal: impossible to control, difficult to predict, and capable of causing considerable harm. Ignore it or underestimate it at your own peril.

Social media has no shortage of detractors. Despite over 600 million users on Facebook, hundreds of millions of people regularly using Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and other platforms, as even the Egyptian protests of 2011 sparked, fueled and organized by social media users – many are hesitant to proclaim social media as the best thing since the invention of moveable type and the printing press in the 15^th century. Their trepidation about embracing social media is real…and it makes a lot of sense. As much as these platforms have transformed communication, business, society and politics for the good, there is plenty to worry about.

There have been any number of well-argued articles, speeches and perhaps even books that have questioned the impact of spending so much time communicating on-line, on the potential loss of privacy, on the rampant narcissism and corroding effect of representing oneself and interacting through a strangely ephemeral yet permanent virtual world. It is difficult to accept hours of silent texting as healthy or even productive human interaction. Real life interactions are constantly interrupted by virtual interactions through mobile computing. Young people are regularly bullied and exploited on-line and in some cases there have been tragic outcomes. Reputations have been permanently destroyed by images and thoughtless comments. Thieves, confidence artists, and hate mongers seem to run amok. Rumors, fabrications, half-truths, conspiracy theories and outright lies have propagated and even gained credibility through social media. Despite claims that social media will connect a world of people together, build new communities and improve our way of life, there is abundant reason to believe that it, at least, is a waste of time and energy, and at worst, a serious threat to a cohesive, healthy and productive society.

As Internet based social media is only a few years old, it is difficult to confidently accept or refute a final assessment, whether negative or positive. But it is clear that the growth of social media may be one of the most powerful developments of our time. Any technology that in a few years can change the way people live their lives, create multi-billion dollar companies, topple dictatorships, and allow people to connect to friends around the world cannot be ignored. Is the Beast our friend, or is it our enemy? Should we embrace it or should we fear it?

Recently, a friend and colleague, Bernie Bak, expressed his concerns most eloquently in a brief but passionate query into the implications of social media. He wrote,

“People are connected, but on a much different level. I am connected to more people on social media, but I don't "feel" it is a relationship in the traditional sense. Maybe that's what I struggle with.

“The introvert side of me want to focus on a few, personal relationships, whereas social media exposes me to so many others and me to them. I don't really want to connect, but feel a sense of obligation that I should, lest I offend someone or miss out on something. I realize the current generation has entered the world embracing this instant connection, share-all with anyone approach to daily living, but it is something an old curmudgeon like me tends to want to dismiss, albeit with a sense of guilt.

“I see my three sons embracing social media. They use it every day, whether texting someone in the same bar about where to go next or to "Skype" with me and my wife as they travel the world. My oldest son was in Japan during the recent earthquake and it was great to get an email indicating he was OK.

“I am an infrequent user of Facebook. Do I really want to know that my niece can't wait for her husband to get home because she has a romantic evening planned? I suppose it's nice to know that my sister-in-law has reached a new level on Farmville or that her grandson's first haircut went well. I, and a few of my associates (fellow introverts perhaps?) long for the simpler days of the past where you know your neighbors and their kids names, where conversations are across a table, face to face. These are all elements that produce a sense of community, not a virtual world.

“Don't get me wrong. I enjoy the GPS in my car. I prefer HD digital television versus analog. I have an iPad. These are things and not relationships. Perhaps the social media revolution will produce a new, more extroverted generation. It will be interesting to observe, but I realize I will be forced to participate at some level, lest I become a relic.”

There’s no question that social media communication is new. For those of us who grew up in an environment where other forms of communication were dominant, there is cause for discomfort. But it is instructive to reflect on the incorporation of other communication technologies in the past. There was a time when television was seen solely as a destructive influence on everyone’s minds and social lives. There is still discussion regarding the abuse of television by young people, and of the corrosive effect of spending hours a day passively watching the empty babble of broadcast television.

And yet, television brings an unprecedented amount of knowledge and experience to anyone who can afford a television set. A shared experience of television programming has actually brought people together, whether it’s the shared experience of science fiction programming or the first steps of a man on the moon, of a fictional mini-series about slavery or of the real life struggles of the civil rights movement. Have lives been impoverished by minds filled with crass commercials and awkward fiction? Or have they been expanded by a shared video experience of a much larger world?

A few centuries ago, the invention of the printing press prompted abundant concerns about the anti-social or corrosive impact of writing. The ability for anyone to publish a pamphlet at a low price and distribute it broadly has had much to do with the toppling of more than one aristocratic regime. There are plenty of poorly written works of fiction that line the walls of beach houses, focused on unenlightening and sensational subjects such as crime, sex and conspiracies. Writing has certainly helped to propagate lies, hate and nefarious agendas. Arguably, books such as Adolph Hitler’s Mein Kampf have had considerable negative impact on our society. The very act of reading can become anti-social. Many people can withdraw from the world and from real life interactions with their friends and family through the reading of books.

 And yet, the shared experience of reading has brought people together and enriched lives well beyond what is possible through personal interaction. There is a shared experience of the bestsellers of Stephen King and the works of William Shakespeare, of Marvel comic books and the epic poems of Homer that define the very nature of modern civilization. Books bring a world of experience and knowledge to anyone who can read. Human civilization has been shaped, both for ill and for good by what we have written.

Communication is a wild Beast. It distributes all that is good and all that is bad about the human condition. It can empower us, it can transform us, it can destroy us.

In 1919, William Butler Yeats wrote a marvelous apocalyptic poem, The Second Coming, which includes the following lines:

“…And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
 Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

Is social media and the Internet a rough and dangerous Beast “slouching towards Bethlehem to be born?” Most certainly. Will it continue to cause problems? Absolutely. Will it destroy us? Given our history of adapting to, harnessing and benefiting from the power of other communication platforms such as the printing press, telephone, radio and television, I suspect not.