I’ve always found the recent debates over the role and impact of social media in our modern society fascinating.
On the one hand, it is readily apparent that the impact of social media and the explosion in the popularity of the YouTubes, Facebooks and Twitters of the universe have dramatically and seemingly forever altered the global media landscape, leaving the so-called “legacy media” (defined as print newspapers, magazines and network television) scrambling to hold on the remnants of a once highly lucrative business model and grasping blindly in the dark for a solution.
Problem is, once the genie comes out of the bottle, you rarely get to put it back again. Quite simply, social media isn’t going to go away. How social media becomes integrated into the whole of society, however, raises a whole host of questions, including but not limited to how to effectively monetize social media, grapple with ongoing massive breaches of intellectual property and copyright laws and ensuring that social media doesn’t create a “race to the bottom” with respect to quality journalism and literary content.
These issues are battles for another day. What interests me most for our current purposes is what I’ve loosely referred to as the paradox of social media: that the increasing means and tools of communications and connectivity appears to be coinciding with decreasing levels of actual political, social and community involvement and engagement.
In theory, these new developments in social media should have a democratizing effect. In other words, as these new technologies become available, usually for free, greater numbers of people from different parts of the globe ought to be able to share and express ideas. Under this model, actual and perceived connectivity should flourish. Certainly, advocates of social media argue that this is the case.
Unfortunately, the alleged connectivity appears to be highly superficial. Despite greater access to social media, which correspondingly should increase the amount of linkages and connectivity between people, ironically enough the result seems to be even greater sense of personal isolation. While social media connects people, it simultaneously provides people with an excuse not to engage in the real world. I’m not a Luddite, nor am I suggesting that we need to get back to a world where every communication needs to be face-to-face – far from it. But when dating sessions are being offered where individuals stand around in the same bar and Twitter to potential mates rather than actually, say, talk to one’s potential future mate, dare I say that we might have too gone too far?
Additionally, as I’ve previously argued in this space, the increase in the prevalence of social media “groups,” while adding to one’s public image and generating the perception that one is actively engaged and involved, does not accord with the downward trend of actual involvement in the political or community spheres. While there have been exceptions to this trend, such as during Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, where the internet was used to great effect in marshalling “grassroots” support, it is important to note that not only has that level of support was not only unsustainable in the long run, it did not transition in or result in markedly higher levels of so-called traditional political involvement once the glamour of the campaign was finished. Instead, in a rather perverse and unanticipated outcome, the Obama camp may have created an atmosphere of disappointment when the soaring message of “Hope and Change,” so readily transmitted and expressed on a Twitter page or Facebook profile, was replaced with the significantly less-satisfying day-to-day political bickering.
Truth be told, I think it’s an important question to ask whether or not people who join interest groups rooted primarily in a social media context would actually have joined a similar group in the real world. If the answer to this question is no, undoubtedly a critical question that necessarily must be solved in the near future is how to bridge this gap. Social media is undeniably a useful tool for connecting people, but empirical and experiential evidence suggests that it is only useful up until a certain point, after which the more “traditional” forms of communication (i.e. actually talking and meeting with people) necessarily must take over.
At the end of the day, from time immemorial, human beings through both necessity and choice have been social creatures. Continued engagement is not only beneficial, but healthy too. Given the tremendous challenges currently facing the world today, some good old fashioned face-time might be a useful step in the right direction.
