Social media are a great addition to our daily lives. People from all over the world can connect quickly, revolutions agains dictators are established, and we have access to all the information we need instantly.
For art students it is a great time to be alive, because they have access to online instructions, resources and knowledge one mouse click away. Finding the information you need and connecting with people has never been so easy.
But these social media can also give us a distorted view on reality. The fact that everything is at the tip of our fingers, can cause us to get the impression that anything is available when we want it. Some things take time. We can see a post on facebook of a work of art that someone has worked on for te years, look at it for a minute and scroll to the next post. The time the artist invested in his work and the time we spend we consuming it is out of balance.
I see many artists struggle with this themselves. Seeing new and amazing work everyday on facebook, twitter, behance and so on, gives them the impression that they are never doing enough. They try to keep up with every new hype that comes along, and try to crank out as many sketches and doodles as possible.
I think for art to be meaningful, it has to come from somewhere. You have to spend time to let it evolve, make decisions, make mistakes, try again, use experience and practice to develop a concept and execution of what you want to create.
The problem a lot of students face these days is that it becomes less important to invest so much time in something that is not ready to be shared online yet, because the result of something that you worked on a long time is consumed just as quickly on the social media as the quick scribbles.
I think that it is good to be inspired, get information and schooling from the internet. But I don't think facebook should be determining the pace of your work. The challenge is to balance between making sure to get your work out there to get noticed and get work, but not to become a slave to the internet, and just take the time you need for developing your art.
