Disconnection in an Age of Ever-Connection

 Disconnection in an Age of Ever-Connection

Starting with platforms like MySpace and LinkedIn while gaining real traction with Facebook and Twitter, social media grew in popularity at an unprecedented rate. A large goal of social media is to connect people regardless of location. As long as there’s signal or wifi, there is more than likely social media use in a given place. It is not uncommon for teenagers and some adults to spend large amounts of their time on it either. With it having rooted itself so deeply into present day society, a question needs to be asked; how does social media disconnect us if the point is to connect us and what are the implications of that? Social media disconnects us from reality and from our natural sense of community. 

Covering all the manners in which social media disconnects us and the implications of said disconnection is impossible. With that being said, an ethical point of view will often be looked at. Prolonged and frequent use of virtual environments forms a parasitic relationship that sometimes benefits the user, but more often benefits the interface. In an article titled “Social Networking and Ethics” a look at the ethics involved within social media was taken. One of the ethical concerns posed was by philosopher and former professor at UC Berkeley, Hubert Dreyfus, stating that “the ethical danger of hyperrealities lies in their tendency to leave us ‘resentful and defeated’” rather than refreshed and ready to return to reality. The song Instagram by Dean describes Dean’s personal experience with using the app and in this case, proves the point of Dreyfus. In the song, Dean sings how “[he] can’t let go of [his] phone” and that “sleep just isn’t coming to [him” as a result of him spending time on social media. Dean’s experience with instagram as a way to connect to others brought him insomnia and rendered it hard for him to put his phone down, but he continued to use the app, disconnecting him from reality and even his body’s natural sleep cycle. From his experience, one can see how strong that parasitic relationship is and the threat it poses to anybody’s daily routine or way of living. Quarantine that was brought about by the covid-19 pandemic has given a larger number of people more time on their hands than they are used to. With that extra time, more people become addicted to using social media. When King University discussed social media addiction in The Psychology of Social Media and how when looking at a study done on self-esteem, it was found that “participants overwhelmingly reported ‘addictive use of social media had a negative association with self-esteem’” and how “These same respondents in the survey said they lacked satisfaction with their lives, which they directly linked to their lowered self-esteem.” Once again, it is certainly clear how detrimental social media’s parasitic relationship can be to one’s well being. This does however still benefit the interface and the companies behind it albeit at the cost of the user’s health. 

 Community is like a puzzle with an incredible amount of pieces that don’t come from the same puzzle, but fit in nevertheless, creating a beautiful picture. Giving back to or helping your community is an important part of keeping that puzzle beautiful. The virtual environment that so commonly is accessed today has in some ways weakened and disconnected community and the sense thereof. In an article done by The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, Thomas discusses how social media may affect our own perceptions. One of the points made by Dr. Ali Jazayeri in the article is how “Instead of [him] sitting and reading other people’s posts on Facebook for two hours, [he] can go do some community work” and yet he still remains “so busy with someone who is not real…” Jazayeri knows fully well how he could be using his time better. He even considers giving back to his community because he knows the importance of it. A story that shows the importance of community and being involved in one is The Five Helpers, an African tale of Dilemma. In the story an important member of the community refuses to marry anyone in the village, but when a snake disguised as a man comes and marries her, it eats her and it requires the work of five especially talented helpers to solve the crisis of where she went and what happened to her. Each man’s skills are very strange but extremely useful in the scenario like how the man who is always thirsty drank the entire lake that the snake was hiding in and the man with incredible reach grabbed the snake out from the hole that it was hiding in under the lake. The story paints a full picture of community in a fantastic light that would allow the reader to understand the importance and benefit of community, but with social media, disconnection from one’s community has become all the more common. A more modern example of community being important and beneficial for those in it is The Biology of Belief. In the first chapter of the reading, the author describes the experience of having taught a class for hopeful med-school students outside of the United States. He very blatantly said at the beginning that he “knew that a significant number of the students were truly unqualified to be attending medical school,” but through his frequent praising of the students coupled with the students constantly helping each other whenever they needed it, the entire class -even the ones he initially thought to be unqualified- passed the final test that his students in Wisconsin would have to take with flying colors and even had a profoundly better understanding of the principles of cells and organisms. 

Social Media is still a relatively new method of remaining connected and forming new connections with people. With that, it’s hard to fully gauge whether or not it is a good or bad thing, but it is certain that for some people it is profoundly adverse. A large amount of people use social media and a lot of them enjoy it, but taking a look at how it can really disconnect us as human beings should be done to get a more holistic view and opinion on the topic. It has the purpose of connecting us, but still manages to disconnect so many people by causing people to abandon reality as well as ruin our sense of community. 

  

Link to doc for essay with citations (footnotes): https://docs.google.com/document/d/10dwL31ztmXrJeBS1JDmOSCYAWswfX1mdjImO0VJ_Hi0/edit?usp=sharing