Take Twitter, for example. At its core, Twitter simply is a collection of short bursts of information. However, using the hashtag system, the retweet system and following the right people turns Twitter into a veritable swiss army knife of information-gathering.

Twitter acts as a polling site; ask your followers what show to watch on Thursdays at 8:30 p.m. and they’ll tell you a multitude of shows to choose from. Twitter acts as a real-time news and sports aggregation site; follow the right collection of political pundits, bloggers and news organizations, and you’re instantly more informed than if you only get your news from TV.

Twitter acts as a message board, using hashtags and replies so other users can lead to thorough discussions about a subject. Twitter even has advertising in the form of “promoted” trending topics, not to mention the tweets offering users deals if they retweet or click on links.

When the NBA Player’s Union chose to decertify this past Monday, because I follow a lot of the people in tune with the basketball world on Twitter, I was kept abreast of developments and analysis nearly as soon as it happened. I also was able to contribute to the conversation with my tweets and analysis for others to consume.

The diverse ways in which it connects users is why Twitter and other forms of social media are such powerful tools. However, like any tool, social media can be made useless if not used properly.

I often hear social media dismissed as a collection of individuals throwing out random and meaningless information. Twitter users can choose to follow only Hollywood celebrities and comedians, or choose to only tweet about what they had for lunch or whatever the next inane trending topic is. Facebook users can choose to only use it to play Words With Friends, post pictures of adorable animals, or only as a way to monitor what immediate family members are up to.

Those are acceptable ways for some people to use social media. However, to get the best social media experience, users have to choose who and what they want to read on their social media feeds everyday.

Just like in life, users get what they put into social media. A plurality of users choosing not to take their social media experience to the next level doesn’t invalidate social media. It only shows what people like to do with their free time.

Society doesn’t invalidate television as a useful tool for disseminating information because of the presence of shows like “Bad Girls Club,” and social media shouldn’t be invalidated by the presence of inanity, either.

Think about how information was transmitted to individuals before the internet and social media; it was either through television or newspapers.

I love newspapers, I want to work professionally at a newspaper in the not-too-distant future, but newspapers are inherently a slow way to distribute information in this day and age. And although television news can be edited and distributed more quickly, the news an individual is looking for is not necessarily shown on-screen all of the time, which makes it inconvenient to get the information you’re looking for.

Today, with social media our society has the tools in place to stay constantly informed and put the information in the proper context.

So far, society has done a great job of that. When Osama bin Laden died, the first place I heard about it was on a social media website. First, his death was reported. Then it was commented on, which then turned into a dialogue about the magnitude of the event, with millions of social media users around the world providing context through their individual perspectives. It’s a perfect example of the power of social media.

So, the next time you see a tweet about Kim Kardashian’s marriage or a Facebook album made up entirely of sunsets, instead of asking yourself, “Is this all social media has to offer?” remember that with social media, the content you get is the content you ask for.

Lazarus Jackson is the State News opinion writer. Reach him at jacks920@msu.edu.