#223 - Anti-Social Aspects of Social Media

For several years, some have asked whether social media actually makes people antisocial. The New York Times first explored this question in 2010, visiting it again two years later.

The question of whether social media is making us more antisocial has been raised in places as diverse as car discussion forums and IBM. One informal poll on Debate.org shows 77-percent of respondents believe social media makes us more antisocial.

Most of these responses and articles focus on the always-connected nature of modern society. They contend that even when people get together they often spend more time looking at and interacting with their phones than they do with one another.

In the informal poll on Debate.org, some of the 23-percent who contend social media does not make us antisocial say social media "gives you a kind of boldness which is really helpful." They also cite the usefulness of social media in keeping track of distant friends and family members.

I can personally attest to both of these things. I have stayed connected and reconnected with family and friends through social media. However, I can also attest to the negative flip side of the "kind of boldness," which I don't see as being "really helpful."

My own belief, based on my own experience and anecdotal evidence from simply reading comments of others on Facebook, is that there is a sense in which social media makes us antisocial. I am not speaking of people always staring at their phones or their computers or their tablets.

The antisocial aspect of social media I refer to is the freedom it gives to people to say things to one another they would not say to another person's face. While there is a positive aspect to this freedom in that it allows everyone a voice, there are some downsides to this freedom as well.

For one thing, I personally believe social media has given rise to more questionable media/news sites, sites whose stories get more attention and are believed by more people simply because they get spread and shared on social media. As a result, trust in more conventional and mainstream sources becomes diminished.

Perhaps worse, is that people feel more free to ridicule others, call names, shame people, and even accuse them of being anti-American, anti-God, etc. simply because they see things differently. Since the election, I have been called any number of things I have never been called to my face.

Even when you know the person doing the name-calling, I think there is still a sense of anonymity (you see just the name, not their face), an electronic barrier between you and them that emboldens them (or you) to say things you likely would not say if you were in the same room together.

I recently unfriended someone on Facebook (for the first time) as a result of this sort of antisocial behavior. It was not because I disagreed with his views, although I do. It was because I was ridiculed for my beliefs and called things like "libtard," "crybaby," and "liar."

Social media makes it all too easy to get wrapped up in our emotions without the normal filters we use to keep from crossing that invisible line from passionate arguing to flat-out rudeness and disrespect. Most of us have either stepped on that line or stepped over it. I'm sure I have, although I try not to.

It is this aspect of social media that I worry about more than the image many conjure up of people always staring at their phones so as to not miss a tweet, a Facebook post, an Instagram message, or a Snapchat video. Perhaps this is a reflection of the society in which we live.

On the other hand, perhaps society has become more divided as a result of our reduced ability or willingness to filter what we say thanks to the power of social media to allow us to say whatever we want whenever we want to say it. I am beginning to lean in this direction.

For those of you who disagree and with whom I am still connected through social media, you are welcome to your opinions. Please just try to keep them civil.

Oh, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't always feel the need to scream out your opinions (through the use of ALL CAPS). Conversations are usually more fulfilling and more useful when they are two-way, and that cannot happen if one side is always yelling. My virtual ears thank you.

#165 - What's Happened to Us?

I should learn my lesson; I really should. At my age, with my level of education, I should know better that to try and discuss serious issues on social networking sites, such as Facebook. (I imagine Twitter, with its 140-character tweet limit, would be even worse, but I don’t have a Twitter account.) Yet I persist.

I must be a glutton for punishment. Almost never do I encounter consistent and thoughtful discussion, particularly when it comes to political issues. Instead, I see name-calling along the lines of “(insert the name of your least favorite President) is the worst (insert favorite derogatory phrase) EVER!” Opposing views are seen as disrespectful, and each side becomes polarized against the other with no space for discussion, no room for compromise (which is itself seen as a dirty word), and no middle or common ground to be found.

Social networking venues, such as Facebook and Twitter were heralded as great democratizing forces. Personally, I think Facebook is great for keeping up with the goings-on of family and friends. As far as democracy goes, however, I think social networking sites, so-called “citizen journalism,” and the 24-hour news cycle have each done more to polarize this nation than perhaps anything since the battle over Civil Rights in the 1960s. 

Each of these, in its own way, is more about “instant gratification” than it is about meaningful discussion. There are repeated instances of erroneous information being distributed, widely read, widely believed, and widely available for several hours before it was shown to be wrong. The correction gets lost or missed in the avalanche of response to the original report.

The 24-hour news cycle, with its pressure to be first, is largely to blame for this. Social networking, with its ability to quickly and widely share such information, is not blameless. Such instantaneous dissemination of information encourages and even demands instantaneous response. 

I would argue that at no time in history has an instant response to anything ever been well thought out. Thoughtful response and instant reaction are mutually exclusive to one another by nature. (Let's not even talk about the fact that something posted by Joe Schmo potentially carries the same authority and weight as something posted by NBC's Brian Williams since the internet has no way to discern which voice is more trustworthy or authoritative aside from measuring web traffic.)

As I mentioned, compromise has become a dirty word in today’s political arena. Yet for years, give and take by both sides was how anything in this country got done. Today, action is replaced by gridlock caused in large measure by both political parties mapping out positions increasingly at the extreme edge of their respective ideologies in order to even further differentiate themselves from the other side. The President then gets blamed for inaction, unless he actually tries to do something through Executive Order, in which case he gets accused of bypassing Congress and acting like a dictator.

Some of this I have touched upon before, but if anything, things have gotten even worse. I’ve concluded the wisest thing (or at least the safest) is to disengage from politics and political discussion. Such an act is seen as capitulating to the opposite side and as being part of the problem rather than the solution. However, I have now lived long enough to see that people will believe even the most outrageous lies if they are repeated often enough just as many people, for whatever reason, seem inclined to vote against their own base interests based on some faceless group’s assertions that “X (whether it be reduced coal emission, a higher minimum wage, clean air, etc.) is bad for America.”

 

I am increasingly convinced that America as we know it is nearing the end of its life cycle. We should not be surprised; no empire or democracy lasts forever, and America has had a pretty good run. Not as good as the Roman empire, but not bad. I don’t think the end of America will come because of its failure to address the national debt or because of its failure to protect its environment or a failure to transition to alternative fuels or because of a decline in the nation’s morals or an abandonment of “the American ideal," whatever that ideal is.

No, when American as we know it is no longer, it will be due to the fact that we have lost the ability to talk with one another on the national stage in a meaningful and respectful manner. We have lost the willingness to compromise and the desire to search for common ground with one another. That, more than anything else I can think of, will be our undoing.

#159 - Technology - It's a Beautiful Thing . . . Sometimes

Technology is a beautiful thing – when it works. When it doesn’t, people are inconvenienced, businesses lose money, lives are disrupted.

A recent and minor change in the office where I work brought that notion home to me. The change – a simple battery – caused us to be without access to our internal computer network as well as the external computing world for about 30 minutes. No opening files from remote locations, no sending or receiving e-mails, no surfing on the internet and, because we have internet phones (voIP or voice over Internet Protocol), no incoming or outgoing phone calls.

Once the battery was replaced, regaining access was simply a matter of restarting our computers, reopening our e-mail programs and web browsers, and picking up where we left off. Except for phone calls, that is. This seems to be a problem every time there is some sort of change to our computer network, only no one seems to know where the reset button is for the phones (if there even is one).

Technology is a double-edged sword. It frees us and ensnares us. Thanks to technology, medical and scientific procedures and advances once unthinkable become commonplace. We can map the human genetic sequence and turn once major surgical procedures into outpatient surgeries with small or no scars. At the same time, a computer failure can cause large parts of a major city to lose power or potentially cause a nuclear missile to begin a pre-launch sequence. Because so many of us use e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter to communicate with friends, family, and associates, a technological failure can also cause us to lose touch with the world around us, albeit temporarily.

As I sit and wait for the telephones at work to resume functionality, I am struck by the thought that most if not all of us would be lost and completely unable to function in a world without the technology we take for granted. While our 18th and 19th-century ancestors were largely independent and self-sufficient, we are largely dependent (the objections of some notwithstanding) on one another and upon our economies of scale. Such changes are more efficient and perhaps make life easier, but disruptions are more noticeable and create more inconvenience on a larger scale.

Although they are never mentioned as part of the argument, I suspect such potential pitfalls lend credence to the suggestion (even argument) that each of us needs to occasionally unplug and disconnect from our electronic lives and plug into and connect with the physical world around us. Our e-lives allow us to reconnect with people and places we might otherwise lose touch with, but they are no substitute for the world that exists all around us. As The Police sang in their 1981 song, “we are spirits in the material world.”