Sis. Kaleigh Spooner
Writing 150
February 2nd, 2015
A Tale of Illuminating Falsehoods v. Faulty Realities
Tragedy sits before the screen: A girl, whose
self-worth is measured in “likes” and not confidence, whose circle of
“followers” is larger than that of her confidants, and whose perception of time
is gently slipping away. This situation, although heartrending, is not
uncommon, nor is it exclusive to the female gender, and can appear in various
forms. Just as any play has a setting, the backdrop to this story is the
newsfeeds and the profiles in the realm of social media. The sites, apps, and
phones that are mediums for these online networks can have an overbearing and
controlling influence on the lives of many, and are almost always with us. Social
Media, although not bad in its nature, can be easily distorted to be a
foundation of vanity and vulnerability, a restriction of social interaction,
and a devil of time. Funny, though, how social media’s goal is to increase our
connections and communications with friends – for many, however, it seems to
have had the opposite effect. Those who use social media need to be aware of
its dangers and be a strict evaluator of the time, self-confidence, and
tangible friendships that may all falter and fade if virtual community
participation becomes obsessive.
All types of social media can be
potentially time-consuming. This is almost true in every case – managing a
firm’s Facebook advertisement page, tweeting about an upcoming club event, chatting
a friend living abroad, or even posting on a class blog. These are all proactive pursuits that enrich our lives
and help us to move forward. However, there is a different type of
time-consumption that I am sure we are all at least a bit familiar with – scrolling
through (pointless) posts, double-touching our way through hip, filtered
pictures, and lol-ing at streams of vine videos – all fun things, but when we
allow them to become too time-consuming, we give up the other end of the opportunity
cost: doing anything that is, quite frankly, more productive. This goes both
ways – as Best-selling Author Margie Warrell wrote, “like any addiction, no matter
how many likes we get, the high is quickly outlived and we are forced to head
back for another round of posts and likes and follower counts. It's a vicious
cycle.” To break this cycle, we must become stringent about the time that we
spend on our profiles and newsfeeds.
I dare say
that the social media isn’t a measure of popularity, and certainly not an
indication of happiness, although many may temporarily see it in this way. The
unspoken promise and seduction that these sites appear to offer us – “if you
have more followers and likes, you are more followed and liked in reality” – is
false. The disappointing qualities of vanity and vulnerability (which correlate
with happiness) can come as results of posting (usually pictures) and receiving
feedback from our social circles in the form of “likes” and comments. Take the
example of a “selfie”, Oxford dictionaries word of the year back in 2013 for a
picture taken of oneself and uploaded on a social media website. Selfies are
not all-out bad – and they are fun to take once in a while. However, over-posting these may scream out ones’
narcissism and can be interpreted as vain, or even as a form of insecurity when
that person depends on its likes and comments to enchant their egos or praise
their appearances day after day. By viewing the number of likes, reposts, or
shares on “masterminded-posts” to be indicative of their significance in the
world, social media users are being deceptive to themselves by feeding this
unhealthy sense of pride. This can work the other way around too – when posts
get no attention, or one may feel they have little influence in their social
media circle, and therefore little significance in reality – this is extremely
negative, and can diminish one’s productivity. These sites and other photo-sharing
opportunities may also take form of a comparison-game. By comparing your
experiences and accomplishments to others through the form of photographs and
posts, one can also come away with negative feelings. Thus, we see the effects
of vanity and vulnerability in social media and its impact in self-respect and
confidence. Dr. Ethan Kross from the University of Michigan conducted the first
study to directly observe from Facebook’s influence on happiness and
satisfaction of students in Ann Arbor, Michigan. “The researchers observed that
the more a person used Facebook between surveys, the sadder his or her
responses became. In addition, heavier Facebook usage over the entire two-week
period was tied to lower life satisfaction” (Akpan). This study seems to
support not only the fact that Facebook may affect productivity (due to time-wasting),
but can be even more so damaging to one’s self confidence and happiness levels.
“Lower life satisfaction” and “sadness” should not be side effects from sites
that aim to assist our social lives. To turn this vicious cycle around, we must
recognize that “comparison is the death of joy” (Mark Twain) and that “pride
makes us artificial and humility makes us real” (Thomas Merton).
The effects
of social media on our time and our emotions can be tied to our relationships in
reality – is our time looking at the Face-book taking away from the Face-face?
As a social-media user myself, I can attest to there being two fronts when it
comes to the effects of social media on real life relationships. The first, being
the use social media to keep in touch or network, and the second being an
obstacle and hindrance to improve current friendships and seek out new
relationships. The first front is positive – I use social media to communicate
with many friends and family that live outside of the country through Skype, Facebook,
and instant messaging. By connecting with them in this way, I can share new
happenings of my life and vice versa. The other front is negative: it seems
that when more time is spent on building up status in social media for sakes
other than healthy communication, the quality of offline friendships falters.
50 years ago, the dating scene was much different than it is today. People got
to know each other by going up to strangers and introducing themselves – they
would give each other a short call and make plans to meet up. Today, many couples
have started to meet each other by simply “swiping right”, and then letting
that same relationship get dominated by texting, where it is easy to hind
behind a mask. We must look beyond the face-value descriptions and photographs
that are posted online, and invest into individuals themselves – whether this
be dating or otherwise. I have often witnessed friends completing activities
just for the purpose of taking a picture to post later… and then obsessing over
the number of likes on it. There is nothing wrong with this except for the
reasoning behind it. Today, friendships have the potential for so much more
depth than a profile could ever proffer, conversations have so much more
meaning than texting and emojis, and quality time outdoors has so much more
gratification than a nose stuck on a phone screen. Once one starts to discover
these potentials, and live them, they can begin to measure their relationships
by the true memories created, rather than “likes” – and regardless of whether
these memories are eventually shared publically or not.
These three
“fates” of social media – time-wasting, vanity and vulnerability, and diminishing social-interaction
– must be controlled and eliminated if we are to have a positive outcome from
our online connections. We must have the time to make ourselves available to
those around us and cherish their time – quality time means looking into eyes
and not screens. By placing time limits on social media, we are able to clear
up more time not only for the short-run, but for the long-run as well – as we
are able to practice productivity and focus, we are able to find time to
improve friendships in day-to-day conversation and activities. We must acquire
a sense of security and confidence that has no dependency on the opinions of
others, but that comes from ourselves and from the advice and support of those
whom we trust most. The online virtual world, although intriguing, can never
replace the vividness and genuineness of the actual world we live in – and
isn’t the latter so much better than the first? When we do use social media, we
must use better judgment by developing better habits of not wasting time and
losing ourselves in what can be considered the futile aspects of social media
(comparison and conceit). We should all take the time that we respectably gain
from this to write more hand-written letters, enjoy fresh air and beauties of
the world, and speak to those we admire and cherish in this life face to face
rather than letting the soft glow of cell phones hypnotize and keep us from
these things – there must be a careful balance between these two worlds: virtuality
and reality. We must keep in mind that the reality
of our lives outside the virtual world– no matter how imperfect they are – is what
fuels our well-being, our friendships, and our future.
Works Cited
Akpan, Nisikan.
"Facebook Usage Linked To 'Declines In Happiness': Is The Social Media
Platform Making You Depressed?" Medical Daily. 4 Aug. 2013.
Web. 24 Jan. 2015.
<http://www.medicaldaily.com/heavy-facebook-usage-linked-declines-happiness-social-media-platform-making-you-depressed-251415>.
Warrell, Margie.
"Seduced by Social Media: Is Facebook Making You Lonely?" The
Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 8 Nov. 2013. Web. 24 Jan. 2015.
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/margiewarrell/social-media-lonely_b_4034744.html>.
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