Login with Facebook to see what your friends are reading Enable Social Reading i Craig Kanalley Craig Kanalley Senior Editor, Big News & Live Events, The Huffington Post GET UPDATES FROM Craig Kanalley The Problem With the Media's Social Media Addiction

HuuffPo reporting:
Earlier this year, a study found that social media is more addicting than alcohol and cigarettes.
Addictions can be dangerous. They can threaten our relationships with others and overall well-being. No one is more addicted to social media right now than the media.
Arianna blogged about this in March, when she wrote that the media's obsession with social media had reached "idol-worshipping proportions."
I'd argue the addiction has only gotten stronger, as journalists live tweeted seemingly every word of the first presidential debate last week, helping set a new record for volume of tweets in the process. Because you know the world needs a thousand journalists tweeting the same line at the same time.
Let's take a step back. Five years ago, the role "social media editor" was unusual. Now, it's common; Columbia University's Sree Sreenivasan has compiled a list of them. But will the position exist five years from now? Liz Heron isn't so sure.
Fact is, if you're a journalist, and you don't use Twitter or Facebook, you're a rare breed these days.
Now, that alone is not such a bad thing. To the contrary, it allows for so much good. These tools enable us to easily connect with others, engage with them, and distribute the work that we do. And, really, we have to be there. That's where our readers and viewers are.
The problem lies in over-reliance on social networks, obsession with them, and over-dependency.
It's troubling for several reasons.
(1) Forgetting What Journalism Is About: First of all, what about good old-fashioned journalism?
Crowdsourcing is great, and tapping into the power of social networks is wonderful, but does it equate with interviewing people on the phone, or better yet, speaking face-to-face?
Can 140 characters alone tell an effective story?
Can social media compete with being at the scene yourself, witnessing news happening firsthand? Can it conduct in-depth investigations?
Social media newsgathering can enhance our journalism, but it cannot entirely replace it. It can help us add context. It can personalize the personalities behind the news (these are real people!). It cannot fact-check and verify information in real-time. (Update: Some people have called me out on this last sentence; they disagree. They have a point. Social media can and does self-correct itself over time. But instant fact-checks do require some good old-fashioned research from human beings.)
(2) Losing Sense Of Reality: Social media also puts us in a bubble. Not everyone uses social media, even if we'd like to believe they do...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-kanalley/problem-social-media-addiction_b_1949488.html