Social Butterfly

            Technology is great! It makes communication nearly instant. Look how far we’ve come: from the dark ages of having to travel and verbally relay news, to having a way to write things down and have them delivered by horseback for a small fee, to having “snail mail” which is a veritable bullet compared to what stage-coach post was, to having e-mail where you can type a letter and it is received almost instantly. Now we have evolved to even higher forms of communication: Facebook, Twitter… the list goes on… all of which allow us to have all the wonders of knowing what people are doing instantly… without the necessity of really caring or genuinely taking time to be involved in their lives...

Now brace yourself for the irony: I’m posing this on a form of social media! Tada! Good for me! I’m another one of those people who is going to commentate on how misused social media is destroying community… and no one is going to care! But, for the people who do read this and don’t dismiss me immediately, here are a couple thoughts worth thinking:

1: Does social media really connect people and make them happy?

            You’re probably aware of the studies coming out that have concluded that social media (Facebook is the particular case in point… and I will narrow my examples to FB cause that’s the social media I use) has the general effect of depressing people. Why? Well, according to an article in the Economist magazine, “using Facebook is associated with jealousy, social tension, isolation and depression.” Being able to see what all our “friends” are doing, all the time, can often wreck mental havoc, especially if you’re going through a real-life rough spot with someone.  There is no escape or ability to get distance from the situation to get perspective if we constantly see post (and particularly pictures) that wind our minds even more tightly around the problems in the relationship. Even apart from drama, we see the cutesy pictures of BFFs, the picturesque family vacations, stories of great concerts…  The general outcome of being flooded with all this, really, personal information, is discontent, jealousy, and because we generally engage in social media on our own, it can lead to feeling isolated, abandoned, and depressed.

2: Why is it SO hard to disconnect?

            Well… we’re afraid of missing out. I know I’ve had a hard time separating myself form social media because I really do want to know how people are who don’t live near by… but I don’t trust them to keep up with me… So, instead of building trust, I social media stalk them… makes loads of sense, I know. There is a doubly negative thing happening here. a) We feel like we’ll miss out if we don’t keep a close eye on what everyone is up to on FB. And b) we feel like we miss out because we’re not doing things with the people we stalk on FB... There’s this constant tension of, “I don’t want to get rid of FB cause I won’t see the pictures or hear what people are up to! … But if I stay on Facebook I will see pictures and hear what people are up to… and I know that often makes me feel inadequate, discontent and lonely.”

3: So what happens now? 

(Well, for one thing I’ll have that song from Evita stuck in my head)

            For many this may mean checking Facebook less often and engaging with the people who are actually around them.  The same study cited in the Economist showed that, “the more [the] volunteers socialized in the real world, the more positive they reported feeling…” There is just something about actually interacting with people. In a world of  “quick and easy” Facebook and other social media has a way of de-personalizing friendships. The time and effort necessary to maintain any solid relationship is often sacrificed for convenience.  “So what about my friends that live across the state, country, world? Social media is the only way I can keep up with them!”  Well, this particular study showed that there was reported satisfaction even just talking on the phone! “But some people don’t like talking on the phone…” Tough luck, it’s a useful skill and something that can be worked on. (I use to hate talking on the phone, but I’ve had to do it to keep up with certain people I know… and it has gotten easier) You can hear the person’s voice and that is a wonderful and incredibly helpful thing. But hey! If the phone doesn’t work out very often there is e-mail and texting. Both of those methods of communication show some thoughtfulness and are a good way of actually finding out what’s going on with someone. Social media typically paints a picture of people’s lives the way they want everyone to see them as, not as they actually are. If you really want to know how someone is actually doing, Facebook stalking is not going to work… For me this all means that I’m pretty much going to cut Facebook from my life. Seems a bit extreme huh? By this point you can probably tell that I am fed up with the fakeness I’ve come to associate with FB, and I’ve come to the point where I can finally pull away from it. I have personally found that the times when I’ve been most content, engaged with people, and productive have been the times where social media was absent in my life… and I figure, that it is pretty universally accepted that the things in life worth having… money, reputation, power, skill, property, happiness… are worth working for… so why not relationships and communication?

Study source:

The Economist:  http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21583593-using-social-network-seems-make-people-more-miserable-get-life