As a preview, here are some nuggets from "Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?" that might make you want to read the whole thing:
- "We are living in an isolation that would have been unimaginable to our ancestors, and yet we have never been more accessible."
- "Facebook arrived in the middle of a dramatic increase in the quantity and intensity of human loneliness, a rise that initially made the site's promise of greater connection seem deeply attractive."
- "We know intuitively that loneliness and being alone are not the same thing."
- "The idea that a Web site could deliver a more friendly, interconnected world is bogus."
- "We make our decisions about how we use our machines, not the other way around."
- "Our omnipresent new technologies lure us toward increasingly superficial connections at exactly the same moment that they make avoiding the mess of human interaction easy. The beauty of Facebook, the source of its power, is that it enables us to be social while sparing us the embarrassing reality of society -- the accidental revelations we make at parties, the awkward pauses, the farting and the spilled drinks and the general gaucherie of face-to-face contact."
- "Among people older than 65, 3 percent reported symptoms [of narcissistic personality disorder]. Among people in their 20s, the proportion was nearly 10 percent."
- "What Facebook has revealed about human nature -- and this is not a minor revelation -- is that a connection is no salvation, no ticket to a happier, better world or a more liberated version of humanity. Solitude used to be good for self-reflection and self-reinvention. But now we are left thinking about who we are all the time, without ever really thinking about who we are. Facebook denies us a pleasure whose profundity we had underestimated: the chance to forget about ourselves for a while, the chance to disconnect."
7 comments:
I read this article when it came out and found it interesting and perceptive in a lot of ways, but as with most discussion about how technology affects us, it still seemed overly simplistic. There are a lot of counter-arguments that can be made to these points -- for example, it could be argued that technology doesn't create our cultural identity but only reflects it. People who lack the ability to be introspective use facebook and twitter accordingly, while those who are introspective are hardly going to be brainwashed into the cult of shallowness just because of the George Takei memes. I imagine someone could even make the argument that valuing introspection and being "disconnected" is classism: it's something you can do only if you can afford to do it. And on and on with the counter-arguments, and counter-counter-arguments. If nothing else this topic will generate a ton of articles -- all of which will be made more accessible through the miracle of social media. Heh heh heh.
Yep, the article spawns counter-arguments just like Carr's piece from a couple of years ago. The statistical difference about narcissism, for example, might not have much to do with technology and have more to do with age? Are we more narcissistic when we're younger, or is it a fixed trait throughout our lifetimes? The author's point about astronauts being an American icon, etc. made me laugh, but I like how the author weaves in different researchers. In a related matter, I find Carr's argument (_The Shallows_, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?") compelling. In other words, the medium does affect the message and the messenger though I think personality type plays a huge role, of course.
I'm pretty sure I read the Carr but I think I need to check it out again. From a writer's standpoint, I can say the medium most certainly does affect the message and messenger, at least it does this messenger and her messages. Writing I do longhand is completely different from writing I do in Word, and as I discovered the hard way, blog writing is quite different from book writing. Most of all, the handy distraction of facebook and twitter takes me away from my work every 20 minutes or so and probably makes my prose disjointed and incoherent. Luckily that's "in" these days.
If you add in willfully obtuse with disjointed and incoherent, then you'll be sitting at the cool kids table.
QBN, I'll do my best...to do my worst.
Interesting post Mr. Nasty. The Neuroscientist Professor Susan Greenfield from the UK has had a lot to say on this very topic. She also came down to my neck of the woods (Australia) and did some lectures on the subject. These lectures are easy to find online and may be of interest to any looking for further insight.
Thanks for letting me/us know about the lectures, bimdude. I'll have to check them out.
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