The bad side of ‘instant technology’

Last week, there was a shooting at Florida State University. It occurred in the library in the middle of the night, and it was all over the Internet within a matter of minutes. There was the video of the warning calls in the library, the desperate texts and tweets between a father and daughter, and more.

After reading David Cullen’s “Columbine,” an extremely detailed account of the 1999 Columbine school shooting and the story surrounding it, last week’s shooting seems almost like a completely different kind of situation (aside from the magnitude of the incident).

Although the Columbine shooting was only 15 years ago, I can only imagine how different it would have been if the students then had the technology that we have today. Students at Columbine were trapped inside the school for hours- what would they have been tweeting and texting that could have saved lives?

Also, another issue (probably the biggest) surrounding the Columbine story was the fact that many authoritative media sources just could not get the story right. In the heat of the moment, they sacrificed accuracy for speed, and many sources got the facts wrong many times. I believe that this problem would be even worse if a situation like the Columbine shooting happened today.

There were so many details that surrounded the incident that were crucial to the story, and many of these details were not known until the day (or even months) after the shooting occurred. With social media, these crucial details would be left in the dust for the immediate reaction- much of which would be rash and too emotional to analyze.

We saw this sort of reaction following the bombings that occurred last spring at the Boston Marathon. While law enforcement spent the week tracking down the bombers, social media blew up with conspiracy theories and myths about who the bombers were and where they were hiding. Sorting through mediums like Twitter to find true statements was like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

In general, I believe that social media is great for communication in many ways. However, it hurts communication when disasters occur- specifically ones that induce panic and leave the public thirsty for information. In a society that has increasingly-short attention spans and needs the facts now, social media doesn’t help during times of crisis; if anything, it pours salt in the wound.