In 2008, the Pixar animated film "Wall-E" debuted in theaters. The story of a human race who had become so dependent on products and technology that they had completely destroyed not only Earth, but human life as a whole. No, it's not just the story about some "kiddie robot". Anyways, "Wall-E" envisioned the great improvements to human life in the upcoming years, as seen by this still frame:
As you can see, our society has succeeded in becoming absolutely useless. But this is just an exaggeration. There's no real danger of our human race becoming this way. See:
Wait, that's not right. Here:
Our human race is already beginning to exist this way, due to addiction to media. Media addiction is another negative effect of the media, on par with the cultivation theory, stereotypes, etc. It essentially is the inability of a person to stop using a certain form of media. The example from "Wall-E" is just an exaggeration, sure, but the number of people who are becoming exactly like that is increasing exponentially. According to Facebook, the average user spends 7 hours a month online, and even more if you have Facebook on your mobile device. As Betty White said on Saturday Night Live, "Sounds like an awful waste of time". Betty, you couldn't be more right.
The basic premise behind Social Networking is simple: make it easier for friends to connect to each other, and allow people to meet new friends. Social Networking, by design, is meant to be a "side item" (if you will) to the "entree" that is a person's social life. The problem that has arisen, and continues to rise, is the fact that people have swapped their hamburgers and french fries. A great number of people have begun to use social networks as their main social life, and allowed their real-life social life to fall by the wayside. People aren't using Facebook, Twitter, or MySpace as a compliment to their social life, they are using it as a substitute.
In trying to become more friendly with people, they become more isolated. This anti-social behavior, or, behavior that society does not value, is leading to more shallow interaction between people in the world. While violence and sexual activity are seen as anti-social behaviors, I would argue that isolation is bigger than all of these. But what causes this isolation? Do people like their friends so much (no pun intended, you habitual facebookers) that they have to stay connected with them at all times, or is it something else? The problem that is going on isn't the hunger for a social life, it's the addiction to the media that is the internet. It's a very basic version of Second Life, or even World of Warcraft and we have seen how addicting those can get. People like placing themselves in a controlled environment, which is a majority of social media sites. They can pick and choose which parts of their personality and image to portray online, which fragments a big part of basic human interaction. The scary part about Facebook is the addition of applications. Various games and apps keep people coming back, and actually endanger people's private information by allowing access to pretty much everything.
So will the future end up like "Wall-E"? While it shouldn't ever get this extreme due to the *ahem* certain drives of people that I won't go into in this blog, I think it will approach this to a point. People will become so reliant on media to interact with each other, that a majority of people will have trouble interacting with others in real life. It's already happening to thousands, if not millions of people. And while you were reading this blog, how many times have you checked your Facebook/Twitter/MySpace?
The basic premise behind Social Networking is simple: make it easier for friends to connect to each other, and allow people to meet new friends. Social Networking, by design, is meant to be a "side item" (if you will) to the "entree" that is a person's social life. The problem that has arisen, and continues to rise, is the fact that people have swapped their hamburgers and french fries. A great number of people have begun to use social networks as their main social life, and allowed their real-life social life to fall by the wayside. People aren't using Facebook, Twitter, or MySpace as a compliment to their social life, they are using it as a substitute.
In trying to become more friendly with people, they become more isolated. This anti-social behavior, or, behavior that society does not value, is leading to more shallow interaction between people in the world. While violence and sexual activity are seen as anti-social behaviors, I would argue that isolation is bigger than all of these. But what causes this isolation? Do people like their friends so much (no pun intended, you habitual facebookers) that they have to stay connected with them at all times, or is it something else? The problem that is going on isn't the hunger for a social life, it's the addiction to the media that is the internet. It's a very basic version of Second Life, or even World of Warcraft and we have seen how addicting those can get. People like placing themselves in a controlled environment, which is a majority of social media sites. They can pick and choose which parts of their personality and image to portray online, which fragments a big part of basic human interaction. The scary part about Facebook is the addition of applications. Various games and apps keep people coming back, and actually endanger people's private information by allowing access to pretty much everything.
So will the future end up like "Wall-E"? While it shouldn't ever get this extreme due to the *ahem* certain drives of people that I won't go into in this blog, I think it will approach this to a point. People will become so reliant on media to interact with each other, that a majority of people will have trouble interacting with others in real life. It's already happening to thousands, if not millions of people. And while you were reading this blog, how many times have you checked your Facebook/Twitter/MySpace?
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