Above is a great TED Talk from Paul Miller. In this TED Talk he shares his lessons learned as a result of disconnecting from the Internet for a year; see his The Verge article as well. I was reminded of this TED Talk when a friend started a 30-Day Writing Challenge on Facebook, and the first writing prompt was: 5 problems with social media.
With permission, here are a couple of responses posted:
Response A:
Social Media is a scary thing. We’ve allowed out innermost thoughts and feelings to bleed out like we all have Turrets syndrome. The universality of it is wonderful, but also causes more stressed from around the world. It destroys relationships, and creates triggers. Worst of all, we’re all addicted to it.
Response B:
–It has pulled our focus away from daily living, from enjoying the small details of life when your quiet with your thoughts and being mindful.
–It wastes precious time and energy.
–It has artificially made what other people think and vague social acceptance too important.
–It causes grief and anxiety then we compare the lives of our social acquaintances to our own life.
–It does not begin to represent the whole picture of a persons life. It only represents a small controlled, socially acceptable glimpse.
What is your reaction to these perceived problems? How do you think Paul Miller would respond given his lessons learned? How would you counter these problems given your own lessons learned about using social networking and media?
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My takeaway from Paul Miller’s story, and other reading, is that social media behave like an addictive drug. Addiction alters one’s brain chemistry to create a physiological need for the endorphins it helps to release. Abstention produces withdrawal symptoms. Like alcohol, it degrades social filters and renders inappropriate behavior common. It demands ever-greater amounts of the user’s time, at the expense of emotional connection. Mr. Miller discovered that, also like alcohol, or sudden wealth, social media addiction doesn’t define one’s personality so much as as it amplifies it.
I registered my very first e-mail address as a college student. Being a member of perhaps the final generation that grew up ‘offline’, the statement that “Social media [do] not begin to represent the whole picture of a person’s life. [They] only [represent] a small controlled, socially acceptable glimpse” seems based on an absurd assumption. Having never expected social media to reflect my, or anyone else’s entire life, I am free from such disappointments. I know this sounds smug, but I have come to understand that the more one’s social domain is based online, the greater FOMO (fear of missing out) stresses the user. FOMO has been around since the invention of social gatherings, but the immediacy and ubiquity of social media allow a user to experience FOMO constantly. Social isolation may be nothing new but the new difference in amplitude produces a difference in the nature of the danger.
I wouldn’t suffer the same pangs that someone half my age might if I were to try Paul Miller’s experiment, but I am nonetheless affected by the brain-alteration of the digital age. His written article was too long for my shrinking attention span so I had to load it into a text-reader to get through it. I allowed myself to be repeatedly interrupted by alerts from work as I wrote this post. It is probably of lower quality as a result.