Item — HN Reader

>Essential means something you can’t live without.

It also refers to what is fundamental or characteristic of something. Social media would be a fundamental element of daily life for a great number of people.

Personally I don't think it is very important and have never been a part of social media in any meaningful sense but I am not particularly social in general so I can not offer anything beyond pointing out that words often have more than one meaning.

1 comments

Yes “essential” can mean different things. Since social media didn’t exist until I was in my 40s and plenty of people like me lived and thrived without it I will argue it’s not fundamental or characteristic. If it all went offline tomorrow many people would flip out, like smokers suddenly deprived of cigarettes. But they wouldn’t die and wouldn’t lose any of their essence.

If you were up for a job against someone with equal skills/experience and whose social media presence demonstrated communication skills and a knowledge of the field and yours was filled with posts like the one you just made, who do you think would get the job? While you and I may be old enough that having a good social media presence does not matter much when it comes to job interviews and socialization in general it has a fairly large impact on the lives of the younger generations and it is far more complicated than their being addicted to their phones. In the article "essential" was clearly used in the context of being an important and fundamental part of modern life, not suggesting it was the equivalent of food.

Honestly, I would hire gregjor over the overly-active social media poster. He demonstrates a sense of values and balance.

Don't assume that more social media presence is always better. Indeed, that's rather presumptuous and not a good quality, in my books.