This week on Play All The Nintendo – Arkista’s Ring and 2 awful Back To The Future games. Any way I can take a time machine back to a period I hadn’t played these?
There are three common complaints against social media and the internet in general: 1) that it’s making us all narcissistic and shallow,2 2) that it’s crapping on our ability to maintain meaningful relationships and therefore making us lonelier,3 and 3) that it’s interfering with our ability to focus and get quote, unquote “more important shit” done in our lives.4
Interestingly, after quite a bit of research, it turns out that none of these claims are completely accurate. Social media doesn’t necessarily cause people to become more narcissistic, it just gives narcissistic people more opportunities to indulge their narcissism, and to a larger audience.5 It’s not interfering with either the closeness we feel to others or how many people we feel close to, it simply expands our network of casual acquaintances and the quantity of our casual social interactions.6 And while technology does present more opportunities for distraction (which we’ll get to), it also presents easier transmission of information, tools for collaboration and opportunities for organization.7
What I’m saying is that the whole “the internet is ruining us” argument is a big whiff. It’s likely just the anxiety that’s always wrought by new technologies. When TV and radio were invented, people complained that everyone’s brain was going to go to mush. When the printing press was invented, people thought it was going to destroy our ability to speak eloquently. Complaints about the minds of children being ruined by technology are as old as technology itself.8
Modern technology isn’t changing us. It’s changing society. There’s a difference. One is how we are, and one is simply how we react every day to the world around us. The social media age is changing the basic economics of our day-to-day lives. It’s changing them in profound ways, ways that most of us likely don’t notice. And surprisingly, it’s people like Kim Kardashian who are taking advantage of it.
Just because things have always been this way, doesn’t mean they always need to be this way.
A Bottle of Red, A Half Gallon of White
October 15, 2019
Rise of the Ewoks: Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
October 15, 2019
Ain’t Taxes Grand and Glorious!
October 15, 2019
Aaron Dean Charged with Murder in Killing of Atatiana Jefferson
October 15, 2019
TV Reviews for Regular People: Sunnyside
October 14, 2019
October 14, 2019
Too Much Faith Following the Wrong Leader
October 13, 2019
Trump Greenlights Turkish Invasion of Northern Syria
October 7, 2019
Nancy Pelosi Makes “Official Impeachment Inquiry” Announcement
September 24, 2019
October 10, 2019
On Greta Thunberg and Public Discourse around ASD
September 28, 2019
The Impeachment Meltdown Begins
October 1, 2019
Cuomo, Rudy, and Ukraine, Oh My
September 20, 2019
The GM Strike is Going to Take a While
September 18, 2019
If I had to guess... are the richest parts of the state experiencing blackouts or just the, ahem, middle class parts?
It doesn't matter, I suppose.
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No, Google Did Not Steal The Election
Body camera footage of Aaron Dean moments before the shooting of Atatiana Jefferson[/caption]
Amazinggena via Wikimedia Commons[/caption]
Public Domain