According to a test I did in The Psychologies magazine I am not yet an addict to social media. However with constant reports on how FB is stressing our teens (see article here). And depleting human relationships. As MIT professor Sherry Turkle writes in her new book, Alone Together, which is leading an attack on the information age that the way in which people frantically communicate online via Twitter, Facebook and instant messaging can be seen as a form of modern madness. According to a Guardian article from 22/1/10 other experts say that the debate is so fierce because social networking is a new field that has yet to develop rules and etiquette. I have a feeling that this is the teething problems of the social networking era. It brings me back to my student days, reading MacLuhans “rear-view mirror” theory. In fact many say that MacLuhan has been proved right in his theories even if he died before internet became popular, his thinking was a harbinger of things to come.
“These new media have made our world into a single unit. The world is now like a continually sounding tribal drum, where everybody gets the message all the time. A princess gets married in England and — boom boom boom! — we all hear about it; an earthquake in North Africa; a Hollywood star gets drunk — away go the drums again.”
Marshall MacLuhan 1960 from Playboy interview.
This is very much the reality now, think of Will and Kates wedding, The Japanese tsunami, the Egyptian revolution and Charlie Sheen, events that all have been tweeted and Facebooked in excess. We are obviously not able to heed to all signals of the tribal drum, then we would go mad with information overload. The thing is we have to become savvy and better at negotiating Social Media, and not let it dominate us and our personal sphere. We have to help our teenagers to use the networks wisely and protect vulnerable persons from cyberbullying and create safe online environments where our kids can surf without predatory adults being able to get their real identity. There are some really great websites already doing this TATE movie project for example tells my son to not use his real name when creating an online user name. In order to utilize the positive sides of the social media we have to be aware of its pitfalls. I believe as MacLuhan claimed that we cannot do anything else then accept the effect on our lives that media has.
Sources:brainpickings.org
The guardian.co.uk
news.yahoo.com
