A few years ago, on my Facebook page, I made a long, detailed post about a social issue (I don't remember what issue it was). What I usually do when I'm done making a post is drop a link to my book or website in my comment section for people who want to learn more from me on that particular topic or other topics. While I was dropping the link, I saw the little bubble come up that said, "Someone is typing a comment." I thought that someone was me, because I was the one typing a comment at the time. But then I dropped the link, and it still said, "Someone is typing a comment."
I said "No way. There is no way somebody is already trying to respond to this long post that I just posted less than 2 minutes ago. There is no way they could have read all of this, comprehended it, and formed a logical response all in 2 minutes." I sat there and waited for about 20 seconds, and lo and behold, somebody posted a comment. As expected, their comment showed that they did not understand what they just read. This is common on social media. But I was very surprised, nonetheless, because the post was so detailed where I could not believe that someone didn't take the time to let what I said marinate before they started to respond.
Then it made me wonder, do people try to learn anymore? Or is everyone just trying to show and prove what they know? Social media has become a place where everyone can express what they're thinking or feeling, no matter how sensible or senseless it is. And this has made everyone perceive themselves as an "intellectual" of some sort. We are being bombarded with information every day. We can find out anything we want to by a quick Google search. We feel smarter than ever. And maybe we are smarter than ever, but I believe this stunts our growth because we now feel like we don't need to learn anything. We already know it all.
On social media, I've seen several incidents when someone who was knowledgeable in a particular subject was being challenged by regular folk who came across their post and had an opinion about it. They usually have no idea what they are talking about, but still thinking they are an intellectual match for the person who made the post. We often times try to respond to things that we don't understand simply because we have access to the information. The idea that someone is more astute in certain topics than we are, and we probably should be learning from them instead of trying to challenge or debate them, has gone out the window.
We must understand is that if we don't have the intentions of learning, especially on social media, which is fast-paced and popping out new content frequently, then we never will. Most people do not consume social media content with the intent to learn anything. They consume it with the intent to respond, rebut, or react. Therefore, they're not fully comprehending what they're consuming, nor are they learning. If you are serious about growing in any area of your life, you must be intentional about it. You must make a decision to learn the lessons that you need to learn.
Social media may not be your chosen place to learn, and understandably so. It's not the best learning environment. But you can apply this concept anywhere you go, or when you're trying to learn anything in life. We learn a lot of life lessons just by living, but there comes a time when we must dig deeper. We must search for a higher level of enlightenment that happenstance will not provide us. This must be intentional.
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