Twitter.  Is it a good thing?  Does it give voice and influence to people who haven't earned the authority or credibility?  We hear all the time about people who said something they thought was innocent enough only to be "beaten up" in the "twitter-verse".  Who should have that power?
We see politicians and celebrities who get in trouble based on what they tweet and who are obliged to close their twitter accounts for a period of time.  In fact, we've seen careers ruined by tweets, right Roseanne?  And of course there is President Trump who sets the media on fire almost every time he tweets and he tweets a lot!

 A new report from Pew Research shared by Wired compared U.S. Twitter users to the rest of the population and found "Twitter users were younger, wealthier, better educated, and more likely to lean left politically, compared to the rest of the country."

The Wired article says, "most of us know intuitively that Twitter is not an accurate reflection of the world we live in. It's more of a fun house mirror, distorting and exaggerating its subjects to sometimes funny, sometimes frightening effect. With just 126 million daily active users around the world, it's about one-third the size of the US population, but this self-selecting group can have a disproportionately large effect on the stories the media tells, the political candidates who rise to the top, and the broad sense of which ideas are gaining cultural acceptance—whether or not they truly are".

Re-read that.... "the broad sense of which ideas are gaining cultural acceptance—whether or not they truly are".  That's my biggest problem with twitter.  I believe it falsely represents opinions and their importance. The extension is "talk about something as though it's true long enough and folks will come to believe it.

When the twitter universe speaks, the voice heard is not that of the common man or woman.  Check out the comparison the Pew Study revealed:

75% of Twitter users are under the age of 49, compared to 54 percent of the US population.

42% of Twitter users are college graduates, compared to 31 percent of the US population

41 % of Twitter users/ make more than $75,000 a year, compared to just 32 percent of the US population

From the Pew report - "The Twitter users were also less likely to identify as very conservative than the general population....To be sure, that audience does reflect some parts of the real world—and it can push forward ideas and issues that haven't yet hit the mainstream—but, the research shows, objects in the Twitter mirror aren't always what they seem."

Here's a quote from the website Hootsuite that speaks to Twitter's impact, "Whether it’s the latest news or the latest meme, Twitter consistently punches above its weight in our cultural consciousness."  Translation for Millions - We've heard about Twitter but not that many use it and still we pay more attention to it than it deserves!

 

 

 

However, if you want in, this video from Youtube should help you get started...just tweet responsibly!

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