Orientation in networks

May 1, 2021-Reading time: < 1 minute

Social networks - I am referring to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Twitch... - are companies with the goal of making business by collecting our information. The discovery of this truth can push us to instinctive reactions that are completely ineffective. It happened months ago worldwide, for example, when millions of users decided to abandon WhatsApp to subscribe to other applications such as Telegram or Signal: in doing so, however, they did not reflect on the fact that the logic of algorithms is the same. And so? How to survive algorithms by using them to our advantage? How to take advantage of the enormous potential of technology without falling into the traps it presents? Many books try to answer this very topical dilemma.

I suggest, first of all, to check on the web what followers the author has. "Where there are truck drivers you can never go wrong"This saying to indicate the quality of the restaurant has always been effective. Only those who use the web know how to explain how to stay on it without getting trapped.

The second criterion is evangelical. Our age, increasingly interconnected, opens new frontiers for sharing positive, educational and, therefore, also evangelical content. Christ must be brought to every creature and in the world of social networks live millions of people, many of them young people. 

And here is the third criterion for choosing books that can help us: a healthy critical spirit. We need that balance in which the author explains that not everything is good but not everything is bad either, and for this he tells with sincerity his recipe for using social networks. With an intelligent guide we will learn to remain free to think for ourselves without plagiarizing our thoughts and actions: willing to move as protagonists in the social universe.

The authorMauro Leonardi

Priest and writer.

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