Week 8: Thoughts on the Impact of Social Media on Socialization

 (Readings at Bottom)

            The main theme of the readings this week was the impact that social media and other newer technologies have on our socializations skills, with there being points saying that people socialize more and others saying they socialize less. The video and the article “The Flight from Conversation” both focused on how technologies are taking away something from our regular ‘socializing’ and connection with others, and for the first time, they mention a concrete reasoning behind why these new social media sites are so beloved. It is all about control. You can control what you pay attention to, you can control what you say in the conversation or how you display yourself, and you get a feeling of understanding and connection from the ‘automatic listeners’ on social media. That really hit home for me, because I could see myself doing those things, especially the last one, that sense of automatic listeners. Since I got to college, I’ve noticed that I use social media sites a lot more. I think one part of it is the fact that almost everyone uses them here, and it’s just a way of communicating with others in a very surface level way. For me, nothing meaningful really happens in the exchanging of Snapchats or seeing an Instagram post. The analogy I thought of is Computer Science related (sorry if this makes no sense, but it makes sense to me.) In programming, specifically Java, there are things called String Objects that you can assign a value, in this case some text. An example might be: word = “Hello”. The value is the word Hello. The point is that these string objects have some sort of value (usually). That value can even be just nothing. You would write that in code as test = “”. Test still has a value, but it’s value is nothing, if that makes sense. You can also have a string object that has a null value, meaning that it is empty. It literally has no value, not even the nothing value of “”. I imagine the interactions I have with social media as replacing the null values of strings with nothing values of strings. Essentially for me, social media is like replacing the absence of anything with nothing. It doesn’t really feel like I’m connecting with anyone really, at least not on the deep level that I would if I were to talk to them face to face, and I feel like that’s what the articles are getting at. It makes me more self-aware, in a way, and right now I’m questioning why I repeatedly check Snapchat and everything when I know that it doesn’t add anything to anything, it just creates the feeling of there being something for a brief moment, when really there is nothing. To be honest, I wish I could have the same sort of connections with people at a face to face level here that I did back at high school, but so far, I haven’t really been able to see it, and it makes me a bit sad.

            The article “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” goes more along the middle line of whether or not smartphones are positive or negative influences in our lives. There were a lot of positives that I didn’t really think about, such as the fact that teens are physically safer than they were before. It makes a lot of sense when thinking about how teens don’t get out as much as they usually do. I do think that the article was taking perhaps an exaggerated view with the example person that it gave, because in my experience, teens do get out a lot. They aren’t all just holed up in their room with nothing to do but go on social media. In what I see, a lot of what they do is planning until they actually do go out, rather than not going out at all. Of course, my experience isn’t necessarily the average experience. What I do agree with in the article, however, is the idea that more screen time is making people more depressed, because I can see it happening in my own personal life. I only got a smartphone last Christmas, in my senior year in high school. Previously I had a flip phone and an iPad that I used for some Internet surfing. The smartphone was a way to have both in one, and that prompted me to get more active on social media, because I could have it with me all the time. At first it was awesome, snapchatting back and forth and able to quickly get updated information about hanging out and whatnot, but the more I think about it, I’ve been generally unhappier when I have my phone, especially here in college, where I use it a lot more than I used to. The best moments in the previous year were experienced when I didn’t have access to my phone, or when I put my phone on silent, or I simply forgot to check it. It was that freedom that came from not needing to check my phone that really helped me experience life more fully, but now, I’m just so reliant on my smartphone for checking everything that it’s hard to just leave it, to forget about it for a day, to be disconnected from online, and instead connected to the real world. I think ultimately, it is about moderation, as the article says. We need to be careful about how much we use our devices, otherwise they end up controlling us more than we control them.

            In thinking about how much I use my phone on an average day, I decided to check on the web if there were any apps that measured how much time is spent looking at the phone. I found Moment, a free app that simply keeps track of how much time you’ve spend with the phone unlocked each day. It has premium features that can be unlocked with a bit of money, but as a start, being aware of how much time is spent on the phone can make a big difference. If it’s a concrete number that I can look at, I’m more likely to actually do something about it and try and get it down, so that’s what I hope to do with this app. That way, I can set concrete goals in terms of what I want to achieve in the future with how much time I spend on my phone as opposed to vague ones like “I won’t use it as much anymore.” Measurable goals are always better, at least for me. Anyways, that’s just a small side note.

            I did want to give some light to the other argument discussed in “Social Media’s Small, Positive Role in Human Relationships,” because it really does point out some of the positives of the whole social media craze, namely that it allows connection with others despite the ‘obstacles of modernity,’ and that it allows people who perhaps are not as comfortable with the face to face interaction to be free and still able to connect with others. I agree with the sentiment that people are increasing their connectivity with others as they converse with each other in new ways, but I also think there is a big difference between using social media as a way to really connect with others that share interests, and using social media as an easy way to seem ‘connected’ with all your friends, using it as a way to fill the lack of anything with nothing, as I said before. I think Reddit can be a good example here. There is a difference between getting involved in the various discussions with people who are interested in the same things as you, and just browsing through cute pictures and funny videos. I think it’s all about how you utilize the social networks. There is a huge capacity for human connectedness that I believe can arise from this all, as the article mentions, but at the same time I think the majority of users are not using it towards that ideal. They are instead using it to fill some sort of gap in their lives, as an excuse to not do anything offline. Essentially, I think the different articles are talking about two or more distinct concepts and just lumping it all together as “The new generation uses technology and smartphones.” To me, this is a bit misleading, since all the articles (more or less) present this as a general theme when in reality it is composed of a lot of different ones, like how the teens are using their social media. Sure, some articles looked at the quantitative things, the various statistics on teens being depressed and whatnot, but I think they miss the complexity that is the “how” of people using smartphones. It isn’t simply “People use smartphones therefore _______,” but rather I think that it is more along the lines of “People who use smartphones to do _______ are more likely to do ______ whereas people who use smartphones to do ______ are more likely to do _____.” For me this distinction becomes very important, because it more clearly shows how technology is being utilized in today’s world than simply saying “Teens go on social media, so therefore ______.”

Readings

TED Talk by Sherry Turkle

Social Media’s Small, Positive Role in Human Relationships

The Flight from Conversation

Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?