Wednesday, April 25, 2012
The Narcissism of Social Media
The article Jim wishes he'd written: Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?
And more on social media and isolation:
Finally, this is the sort of thing that happens when the social fabric begins to disintegrate: Narcissism in Pink and Blue (Gender-reveal Parties and Cultural Despair)
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3 comments:
There is a lot here—a lot of meaningful stuff, but it will take a while to digest it all. One quick comment I have to make, however, is the remarkable coincidence of what Sherry Turkle says near the beginning of her talk. "Those little devices not only change what we do, but also change who we are."
This, surprisingly, was the same conclusion from the biological study referred to in the post "More on learning and intelligence". 'What we do' physically modifies the dendrites in our brains. So our habits apparently do, in fact, determine who we are—and not just psychologically.
Again, there are a lot of ideas and subtleties here that I need to comprehend, but I think the article I wish I had written is not "Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?", but "Is Facebook Making Us Stupid?".
I am, however, the least qualified person to write about Facebook. The magnitude of Facebook is staggering with close to a billion users—just staggering. And this doesn't include much of China, which has Qzone, Renren and Kaixin with hundreds of millions of users. Obviously, it is incredibly important.
Also, as a quick response, I'm not sure, "Is Facebook making us lonely?" is the right question. That seems to be begging narcissism. Perhaps we should be asking, "Is my use of Facebook (or any activity) making others lonely?".
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