The Power of Social Network Sites

Within a short period of time, the technology of social network sites has quickly become popular and widely disseminated across the world. From SixDegrees.com in 1997 to sites like Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace today, online social networking has seen many changes, and as a result, these sites have greatly proliferated the ways people can communicate with one another. People no longer need to speak to each other face to face in order to communicate a message, but rather, people can use social network sites to create relationships with friends and family in much easier ways than before. It can be argued that humans are naturally social creatures, and in addition, social network sites have made humans more social as they dislike being alone for long periods of time. These sites have redefined relationships and friendships to the point where people can have 400 plus friends or followers online. People can meet old friends, find new relationships, and expand their unlimited networks anywhere at any time. As stated by Danah Boyd and Nicole Ellison in their article, “Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship,” “the term ‘Friends’ can be misleading, because the connection does not necessarily mean friendship in the everyday vernacular sense” (Boyd and Ellison). It is uncertain how social network sites have affected the quality of everyday friendships and relationships. However,  it is significant to point out that the increasing number of friends and relationships people maintain on these sites has increased people’s desires to communicate and to be social creatures, and at the same time, these sites have positively impacted communication skills of children and adults worldwide.   

                                                                                                                                                                  The rapid advancement of social network sites in the last ten years or so has caused people to be more open to sharing and communicating information with a greater network of people. Disregarding the content and quality of this information, social network sites have made individuals more connected with diverse groups of people and less culturally arrogant or self-absorbed. Post Secret is the perfect example of how social network sites build positive, diverse communities of people where sharing information online is encouraged and desired. People not only amplify their own online identities to share with friends and family, but they also share information via video, text, email, or postcards that gets spread around and allows people to always be connected on a more global level. An excellent example that illustrates the power to share information with others is Twitter. It is true that some people use Twitter for personal gain and for personal identity creation like Facebook. However, the main idea behind Twitter is to create and respond to “tweets,” and thus, a member of Twitter can find any news or information from almost any part of the world depending on who he or she follows. Businesses, celebrities, politicians, and average citizens utilize Twitter on a daily basis as an efficient platform for disseminating information to the most people in the quickest manner. Even though sites like Facebook are more focused on ongoing, personal identity production and sites like MySpace are generally geared towards musical groups and their fans, these sites still create relevant, important conversations that open up to a broader audience.  This benefit of online social networking is especially true with Facebook’s new timeline feature that allows instant communication and conversation of information and news. There can be negative consequences of oversharing like privacy issues, but in the end, social network sites, in general, have led to a new, faster way of spreading information around the world, and thus, they have contributed to a powerful global interconnectedness that would not be possible without these sites.

Since people have become so open to sharing, producing, and creating information and other content on social network sites, people in today’s society have become more social, but more important, these sites allow less social individuals to learn valuable, real-world communication skills that help them to overcome shyness or antisocial behavior. The term “friendship” has taken on an expanded, broader meaning because of online social networking. According to Hilary Stout in her article, “Antisocial Networking,” “for today’s teenagers and preteens, the give and take of friendship seems to be conducted increasingly in the abbreviated snatches of cellphone texts and instant messages, or through the very public forum of Facebook walls and MySpace bulletins” (Stout). It may be true that young people’s relationships with friends are more mediated through technology than through face-to-face contact, but at the same time, online social network technology has given young people the advantage of communicating more thoughts, ideas, opinions, and information with more friends than ever before.

Having 400 plus friends seems like a lot of people to manage in today’s rapidly changing and advancing society. Thus, there are people like Hilary Stout who appear worried about what sites like Facebook are doing to teens’ relationships with friends, but overall, these sites have and will continue to have a positive impact on the friendships young people build online and offline. Particularly, these sites will be a greater benefit to shy children and teens than to those who are already very outgoing and active because online social networking does not replace offline communication, real-life experiences and situations, or face-to-face interaction, but rather, these sites enhance communication, experience, and interaction with others. Stout argues that “today’s youth may be missing out on experiences that help them develop empathy, understand emotional nuances and read social cues like facial expressions and body language” because of social network sites (Stout). However, on the contrary, shy youth have much to gain from utilizing these sites because they have given youth constant access to friendships and 24/7 communication with others. It is much easier for a shy person to make friends and form relationships first through the Internet where the social environment is more open, accepting, less nerve-racking, and less threatening than to push a young kid out the door of the house and tell him or her to make a few  friends  off the streets. In other words, “technology is merely a facilitator for an active social life” (Stout). Technology does not replace in-person, intimate communication, but rather, it makes interaction more comfortable, and it acts as a starting conversation point for young people to form valuable relationships now and in the future.  

So, why are social network sites so significant in the development of social and communication skills in young people and in society today? Consider the following example that I have personally witnessed with my friend, Austin. Austin is a normal male teenager in the United States. A person cannot tell what is different about him just by looking at him, but he does have autism. Thus, it is extremely difficult for him to communicate, build relationships, and start friendships with other people face to face. He does not have the same, developed communication skills as his peers, but he does have a Facebook profile that he created a few years ago. Even though he may not sign in every single day, he does utilize the site just like any other typical teenager would by playing games, sharing links, chatting with friends, and connecting with family. Hence, it seems like technology has made it a lot easier for him to connect with people. Plus, the interesting phenomenon about Facebook is that his autism and his shyness do not exist online in the first place because a person’s shyness is only visible in face-to-face interaction. So, social network sites are important to the development of many children’s (and even adults’) social skills that are necessary in society because these sites allow youth to practice communicating information to many people without feeling the heavy burdens of shyness in the present so that they can effectively communicate and interact without much shyness and social anxiety in the future as adults. Thus, with the power to share information and communicate with others, social network sites will always have their consequences just like any other technology, but at the same time, these sites have already proven (in such a short time period) to play a valuable role in today’s society.

To read and learn more about this topic, read these articles:

Boyd, Danah and Nicole Ellison. “Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13.1 (2007): n. pag. Web. 4 April 2012.

Stout, Hilary. “Antisocial Networking?” The New York Times. The New York Times, 30 April 2010. Web. 4 April 2012.

Television: The Technology Reconstructing Reality

Before modern technologies like the television, perceptions of the world came primarily from direct experiences with nature. These experiences were authentic, and they were not manipulated by television. Early television brought significant transformations to American society in the 1940s and 1950s, and it can be described as an innovation that society embraced and adopted with little hesitation. Thus, it became the main centerpiece in the typical American household early on in its history. The television created a national identity as Americans gathered around to form a unified culture. Even early on in its history, television really started to become an inevitable, deterministic technology. Like the adoption of most technologies, the television had its benefits but also its unintended consequences.

The television has a social, cultural, and political impact in people’s homes.  For example, the television exposed Americans to the Civil Rights Movement and the Kennedy assassination in the 1960s. Television captured Americans attention with the political crisis of Watergate in the 1970s. On September 11, 2001, people around the world turned on their television sets to witness pictures and video of terroristic events. Television allowed ordinary Americans to experience the wars in the Middle East through mediated images. From television history, it is crucial to note that television has incrementally become a convenient lens in which people view the world and make meaning out of reality. In other words, television has condensed consciousness, and society has become so transformed that it is become nearly impossible to step away from this technology. Television has both positive and negative effects. In particular, television is a significant technology today because it mediates experiences and expectations, it inevitably filters reality, and it lessens modes of understanding while reconstructing the natural world, cultures, traditions, and the future.

Television plays a substantial role in society because it mediates experiences and expectations. David Nye says that “much of what one sees is subtly shaped by the spectra of light thrown by different types of bulbs and fluorescent tubes” (Nye 194). Television shapes the behaviors, thoughts, and actions of its viewers. This function of television creates a mediated reality. Television inevitably intervenes, and it becomes naturalized into daily life. In other words, the television brings the natural world into the homes of Americans and individuals worldwide. The television offers people a way to vicariously experience the world without having to leave the comfort and safety of their own homes. Because of this vicarious experience, people no longer have a direct relationship with their natural surroundings. The television creates a society that relies more on knowledge obtained from mediated images rather than from nature. Hence, humans are starting to lose their deep relationships with nature and their understanding of the world.

People naturally evaluate real life experiences against the standard world that the television tries to represent and recreate. For example, instead of first-hand experience of U.S. national parks, the monuments of Washington D.C., or the enlightenment of international cities like Dublin, many people will live these experiences or events through television because it tends to make these experiences more accessible and possible to the general public. Thus, the television forms expectations of what people feel, see, and hear. It is so ubiquitous in society that it is hard to imagine a day where a person does not experience a small sliver of the world through the view of an unnatural screen. Television is creating an alternate viewpoint of the world.

Since television mediates experiences, the definition of reality constantly changes. The television alters the perception of reality in a way that causes people to unconsciously separate themselves from their natural senses. Views of the world used to be formed by first-hand travels, experiences, and stories. Before television, there were no news stories to tell people what life was like on the other side of the world. Television programming did not exist to help define reality. Today, it seems like more people are defining reality not by the natural world itself but “by telephones and computer screens” (Nye 194). Television is changing what humans see as normal, a fact which gives them a new identity and place within the world.

The television leads its viewers to lose touch with nature. Simply, they are no longer conscious beings of their surroundings. For example, “tourists’ expectations increasingly seem to emerge from experiences of film and television” (Nye 195). This is a significant point by David Nye because most people probably would rather watch a television special and sit in an air-conditioned room to experience the coral reefs or the African plains than to witness these wonders in nature. Television deprives humans of their experiences with nature. The natural world is becoming peripheral to human existence, and it is slowly escaping the conscious mind because the television is becoming so pervasive that people see the images on the screen and nothing else. As a result, people lose awareness with their natural senses.

The television creates a reality that bypasses the senses, and as a consequence, it filters a reality represented by man-made images creating sensory overload in which humans cannot readily escape. Nye argues that “the technological world has become an all-encompassing blanket of sounds, texts, and representations that define reality without even entering through the old-fashioned portals of the five senses” (Nye 206). One of the major effects that television has on daily life is that it is causing people to lose conscious awareness of their senses. The television symbolizes a window on which reality is portrayed. It is a mirror that reflects, creates, and can impact cultures and experiences. Nye states that this “influence could flow in either direction” (Nye 26).  Thus, television is shaping cultural choices as much as culture is shaping television. Television compresses consciousness because people prefer to experience the world around them not by directly using their senses but through the comfort of a magical screen.

Encapsulation is a powerful effect that television has on people’s lives. It changes people’s original perspectives about the world. It pierces through all aspects of human life because it is a medium that can make people less aware of what is happening around them. By constructing experiences through mediated symbols, television leads to humans “losing touch with other modes of understanding” (Nye 185). In particular, understanding nature is altered as it slowly escapes the conscious mind. Isolation with nature results because television traps humans and places them in a complex web of technology. As a result, humans are becoming less active in their own futures as they expect the television to be this all-knowing, artificially intelligent device. However, society is “not entirely trapped inside a prison of technologically shaped perceptions” (Nye 207).  This idea means that the television is not a fully mediated experience; however, it is starting to become a deterministic, inevitable part of society as it socially reconstructs the world. The public must be careful because they are becoming less involved with the technologies they adopt, and the public have become smaller, inactive participants in the reconstruction of reality, of their surroundings, of technology, and of their future.

Nye, David. Technology Matters: questions to live with. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2006. Print.

Possibilities and Challenges of Internet Technology

The Internet has been a positive technology for society. It has brought people together from all over the world to share information, consume knowledge, and to produce a wide variety of content such as web sites, blogs, videos, and photographs. The Internet is the one place where many different cultures, ethnicities, religions, and groups of people can communicate and interact with each other on a global scale. It is hard to think of one aspect of culture or of one cultural group that is not on the Internet. Thus, Kevin Kelly states in his article, “We Are the Web,” “that in part because of the ease of creating and dissemination, online culture is the culture” (Kelly). The Internet has developed and changed from a passive technology to a much more active one where anyone can truly express themself. The Internet allows people to follow their passions and goals, but also, it allows people to truly be who they are online. As a society, it has become natural for people to produce and consume as much information and knowledge as possible. “The producers are the audience, the act of making is the act of watching, and every link is both a point of departure and a destination” (Kelly). Hence, the participatory and sharing aspects of the Internet have made this revolutionary technology a truly democratic, open medium around the world, but at the same time, it exposes people, it connects the private and the public life, and it makes ordinary citizens vulnerable to attention like celebrities.

Most ordinary citizens of the world are not producing online content primarily because of money, fame, or even celebrity status, but they are using their personal time and utilizing their gifts and passions to upload music, write blog entries, make videos, and create other online content that adds significant cultural value to the web. Internet technology spurs a gift economy where people effortlessly create free online content for others to consume around the world, and hence, these people are building a strong democracy within the Internet. Kevin Kelly states that “this gift economy fuels an abundance of choices. It spurs the grateful to reciprocate. It permits easy modification and reuse, and thus promotes consumers into producers” (Kelly). Kelly’s statement implies that people are actively creative in their pursuits online. Furthermore, people are not being controlled by Internet technology, but rather, they control the web with the wide variety of information they consume, and more important, with the knowledge they constantly share with others. This control can be advantageous because “the electricity of participation nudges ordinary folks to invest huge hunks of energy and time into making free encyclopedias, creating public tutorials for changing a flat tire, or cataloging the votes in the Senate” (Kelly). Consequently, as long as there is a participatory audience for this technology, the power and future of the Internet will be in the hands of ordinary citizens from different countries who bring different cultures, ideas, beliefs, opinions, values, knowledge, and opportunities to the World Wide Web.

So, there is an enormous benefit to producing and sharing content online now and in the future, but web users’ desires to share information openly comes at the cost of merging private space into a public environment like the Internet. By using the Internet, people do have control of and open access to what they upload, create, and post on the web, but at the same time, ordinary people become public figures who put their offline identities at risk of exposure. According to Jeffrey Rosen in his article, “The Web Means the End of Forgetting,” for many, “the Web was supposed to be the second flowering of the open frontier, and the ability to segment our identities with an endless supply of pseudonyms, avatars and categories of friendship was supposed to let people present different sides of their personalities in different contexts” (Rosen). In reality, with the content people create and produce online, the Internet has created permanent, inescapable identities and public images of people.

Every YouTube video uploaded, comment posted on a social networking site, and every photograph is, in a way, publicly and permanently recorded online. “The fact that the Internet never seems to forget is threatening, at an almost existential level, our ability to control our identities; to preserve the option of reinventing ourselves and starting anew; to overcome our checkered pasts” (Rosen). As a result, the technology of the Internet is constantly evolving and transforming, but it is an all-knowing and non-forgetting technology of the past and of the present that makes people vulnerable and feel like the Internet is out of their control. In the end, no individual person is perfect, and everybody makes mistakes that the Internet highlights publicly with increasing production and wide open access. With the billions of people who have access to the Internet, nobody has a perfect or flawless online reputation. Thus, this technology has presented challenges in defining private and public space. Information that was once private is now out in the public sphere for scrutiny.

The Internet has become a dominant technology in society. Today, it would be difficult for many people to try to manage their daily lives without the Internet. The Internet serves so many functions and so many of people’s daily needs. With this technology, people can communicate, interact, write, make and share videos, and do whatever it takes to reach their goals and to use their passions. The web is a community of people producing and consuming simultaneously. This technology has become so embedded in society that it changes the way people think, live, and interact with other people online and offline. This technology is so important to people’s cultural beliefs and values that even some of the Amish are unable to resist the power of actively using the Internet. With the significance the Internet has already achieved in society, it is easy to imagine a future like Kevin Kelly did when he said that “everyone alive will (on average) write a song, author a book, make a video, craft a weblog, and code a program” (Kelly). Thus, it appears that the Internet will have endless opportunities and numerous possibilities, but there are challenges and issues of privacy in the way that make it more difficult to extrapolate and predict the future potential of Internet technology.

Kelly, Kevin. “We Are the Web.” Wired.com. Wired Magazine, August 2005. Web. 28 March 2012.

Rosen, Jeffrey. “The Web Means the End of Forgetting.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 21 July 2010. Web. 28 March 2012.

"Liking"

Throughout human history, people in society have always developed relationships with new technologies. Today, it seems like more and more people worldwide are connecting to social network sites, especially Facebook, and people are always trying to keep up with the latest technological gadgets like smartphones, IPods, and computers. People, especially young people, are spending numerous hours of their day commenting, posting, accepting numerous “friend requests,” chatting, and most important, “liking.” Liking on Facebook has become the new normal for when people find a post, comment, video, or update that they really like, and they can share that information with their friends and family. In his article, “Liking is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts,” Jonathan Franzen argues that technology products like Facebook “liking” are “great allies and enablers of narcissism.” With Facebook, every single member of this site is considered cool and special because social network sites make it easy for people to filter out their real-life identities so that only there most likeable characteristics and qualities are being portrayed in their online profiles. Thus, social network sites and other technologies can be self-serving and  pretending to be likeable and cool online by accepting every friend request, by liking every status, and by always keeping up with the latest technologies has its consequences on the relationships and friendships people have offline.

First of all, social network sites can diminish or reduce and alter the meaning of friendships and relationships because these sites are making it harder for people to deal with rejection. Specifically, sites like Facebook and Twitter allow and encourage users to collect hundreds and hundreds of “friends,” and these sites give people a false sense of hope that every single person they meet will like or even love them. Franzen points out that “we can all handle being disliked now and then, because there’s such an infinitely big pool of potential likers. But to expose your whole self, not just the likeable surface, and to have it rejected, can be catastrophically painful.” Thus, since liking has become the popular action on social network sites, it has become the easy way out of not having to deal with rejection by escaping to online worlds like Facebook that falsely show each individual is cool by portraying the good sides of him or herself.  However, people do not realize that they must come to terms with pain, hurt, dislike, and discomfort eventually in real life. Jaron Lanier states in his article, “The Serfdom of Crowds,” that he knows “quite a few people, most of them young adults, who are proud to say that they have accumulated thousands of friends on Facebook. Obviously, their statements can be true only if the idea of friendship is diminished” (16). Lanier brings up a good point because in the end, the glamorous, self-centered lives people create and build on Facebook and on other online profiles are basically lies that are incompatible with authentic, loving relationships or friendships.

Social network sites help people connect and “friend” with a wide variety of people from all parts of the world; however, since this technology only creates a positive, likeable image of the self, real love in relationships can be diminished  because of likeable technologies and self-centered online profiles that people have personalized, designed, and created. Liking is incompatible with loving someone because people cannot appropriately win the approval of someone they love through technology or sites like Facebook. Society has created a consumer culture with consumer technologies that are designed to be liked. However, “there is no such thing as a person whose real self you like every particle of. This is why a world of liking is ultimately a lie. But there is such a thing as a person whose real self you love every particle of” (Franzen). In other words, a person cannot find an authentic, loving relationship through filtered online profiles or self-seeking technologies. Lanier argues that “when technologists deploy a computer model of something like learning or friendship in a way that has an effect on real lives, they are relying on faith. When they ask people to live through their models, they are potentially reducing life itself” (18). Thus, technology and the act of liking diminish (and ultimately replace) the act of love through commodification because the tools, gadgets, and sites people use on a daily basis are just really reflected back on themselves.

           

Love is a selfless act, an idea that social network sites and technology are not at all familiar with. A real loving relationship is about stepping away from the latest, likeable technologies and the irresistible Facebook profile that only reflects a partial image of the self. A loving relationship is about figuring out and exposing the good and the bad qualities of another person by turning away from the lies and the narcissism that Facebook interfaces, smartphones, and other technological innovations tend to present. Overall, acquiring the most Facebook friends to be popular, clicking the like button to be cool, and always liking and having the latest technologies are all a part of a consumer, advertisement-driven culture that may be fun and cool. However, at the same time, it is not always the right choice to accept every friend request, click every like button, or to surround the self with every single new device.

Franzen, Jonathan. “Liking is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts.” The New York Times. New York            Times, 28 May 2011. Web. 11 April 2012.

Lanier, Jaron. “The Serfdom of Crowds.” Harper’s Magazine March 1998: 15-19. Print