Holly West COMM 200 06/20/13 The Con of Connectivity

When my eyes first glanced over the syllabus for COMM 200, I learned immediately that a part of our final project would involve tracking our social media usage for two full days. Following this, we were to abstain from social media for a full three days. Hmm, I instantly thought. I had not really contemplated any implications of my social media use. Of course I knew that I was an occasional Twitter user and an extremely heavy Facebook user. In a way, I almost considered myself to be a Facebook addict. I had never considered the reasons behind why I chose to use Facebook as much as I did, or more importantly how it made me feel. I would simply type in my credentials and hit the log in button, instantly immersing myself into the lives of my friends living hundreds (some even thousands) of miles away. Fast forward two and a half weeks into the class. Once I had completed the necessary days of tracking and fasting, something became painfully evident to me: I was afraid, almost terrified of feeling alone at any one moment. For me, social media has served as both a comforting device so that I never have to feel alone, as well as a substitute for the in-person interaction I feel that I currently lack. To make sense of all this, I suppose I should explain myself a bit. I transferred to Loyola in August 2012 from a small school in the South. I had thought that coming back home to Chicago would be an easy transition. In my head, I assumed that things would be the same as they were before I had moved in the first place. Somehow I had forgotten one teensy detail. My old friends were not in Chicago anymore. They were at schools far away, just like I had been myself. Once this reality set in, I made a goal to keep myself as busy as humanly possible. Armed with a new part time job, new boyfriend, new apartment, and a plan to graduate an entire

year early, not much room (or time) had been left to make any meaningful connections at Loyola. Exhausted by the end of the day, I would climb into my stretch yoga pants and seek solace on Facebook. In his article How Not to Be Alone, Jonathan Safran Foer notes that technology creates connectedness, but encourages retreat.1 It was so much easier to use the limited free time that I had chatting and connecting via Facebook with my high school friends sitting at their computers miles away. And I could do it in the comfort of yoga pants. Technology journalist Dr. Christine Rosen reminds us to take note of the growing trend of replacing inperson with virtual contact. Why go to the bank, she asks, if you can use the ATM?2 At first I didnt see anything wrong with it. Keeping up with my old friends on social media sites seemed to be a valid substitute in many ways it felt as though we were together. We would share photos, comment on each others statuses and chat simultaneously. However, over the past few months I have noticed an increased feeling of loneliness. My social media diet shed light upon the fact that perhaps the reason I am feeling this way stems largely from my use of social media as a replacement for real interactions. Therapist Lisa Haisha points out that The use of social media sites, when gone unchecked, can exacerbate feelings of loneliness, because they remind the user of how little interaction they truly have with others.3 Slowly, I am realizing that I have little in-person contact. However, one of the most paradoxical issues about all of this is that using social media provides almost a false sense of interaction and closeness that keeps drawing me back in. The fact of the matter is this interacting with old friends via Facebook does not provide the same level of interaction that going out with real people does. In Alone

Jonathan Safran Foer, "How Not to Be Alone," NYTimes.com, June 8, 2013, accessed June 20, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/09/opinion/sunday/how-not-to-be-alone.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0. 2 Christine Rosen, "Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism," in The Digital Divide (New York: Penguin Group, 2011), 173. 3 Lisa Haisha, "Is Your Facebook Addiction a Sign of Loneliness?," HuffingtonPost.com, April 13, 2010, accessed June 18, 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-haisha/is-your-facebook-addictio_b_533530.html.
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Together, Sherry Turkle points out that When online life becomes your game, there are new complications. If lonely, you can find continual connection. But this may leave you more isolated, without real people around you. So you may return to the Internet for another hit of what feels like connection.4 Sure, I can chat, like, poke, friend, and unfriend my 1,844 Facebook friends at any time. This only provides me with the sense that I am extremely wellconnected. However, I cant really feel the warmth of a hug on Facebook. I cant share a genuine laugh with someone at the same physical time. The second day of my fast, I decided to take a social risk I may not have taken otherwise. I hung out in person with an acquaintance that I decided to text. Even though we do not have the same type of close relationship as I have with my friends that live thousands of miles away, I found the in-person interaction to be much more satisfying. I am certain that if I had had access to social media during that time, I may have just used the ATM instead of going to the bank. While maintaining my old friendships is great, perhaps more of my time would be better invested in leveraging my acquaintances to try and turn them into friendships. I could maybe even do this leveraging over Facebook. A recent study profiled in The Atlantic Monthly found that those with a greater proportion of face-to-face interactions were less lonely than those with a greater proportion of online interactions. When the author of the article suggested to the researcher that this surely meant that Facebook inevitably contributed to ones feelings of loneliness, he disagreed, stating that Facebook is merely a tool, and like any tool, its effectiveness will depend on its user. If you use Facebook to increase face-to-face contact, it increases social capital.5 Thus, my using Facebook to interact with my friends who have moved to California and New York may indeed contribute to my

Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (New York: Basic Books, 2011), 186. 5 Stephen Marche, "Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?," TheAtlantic.com, April 2, 2012, accessed June 25, 2013, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/is-facebook-making-us-lonely/308930/.

feelings of loneliness and further, will not lead to any face-to-face contact. If, however, I decide to instead use it to maybe message someone in a class or club at Loyola and get to know them better to perhaps hang out in person, this could be a positive use of the medium. Besides determining Facebook is a substitute for in person interactions, my tracking led me to discover that I often used social media most when I was alone in order to rid myself of an uncomfortable feeling. The new generation - my generation - has grown accustomed to being connected 24/7. Look around any el car or bus and you will see precisely what I mean. Practically every young person is glued to or tuned into a device. We are almost never truly alone without any type of connection. In the final video screened for class, Sherry Turkle spoke at great lengths about loneliness in the digital age. Through our devices, it has become very simple for us to never have to ever feel alone. Turkle firmly believes that this could be detrimental for our society: When we dont have the capacity for solitude, we turn to other people to feel less anxious or in order to feel aliveif were not able to be alone, we are going to feel more lonely.6 We are now growing up in a world where no one ever has to feel alone, largely in part due to 24/7 access to new media. I noticed during any periods where I was alone, I felt a heightened sense of anxiety, and would often turn to others (via social media) to rid myself of those uncomfortable feelings of loneliness. Being alone without any sort of social interaction felt scary as I was used to feeling constantly connected (even if they were not ultimately socially satisfying interactions, as discovered earlier). In his essay The End of Solitude, William Deresiewicz also confirms the younger generations fears of solitude. The more we keep aloneness at bay, the less we are able to deal with it and the more terrifying it

Sherry Turkle, "Connected, But Alone?" (lecture), April 2012, accessed June 22, 2013, http://www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_alone_together.html.

gets.7 Just as Deresiewicz described, aloneness was terrifying. Therefore I found that during my fasting experience, instead of trying to fill that void with social media (because I couldnt), I instead tried to focus on activities that were productive and contributed to my overall well-being, such as working out or looking online for internships. The premise of social media is alluring. A grandmother living over 3,000 miles away from her grandson can stay up to date on his photos and activities. Strangers living with a rare disease can meet and interact with one another, building a support network that may have been otherwise impossible. A college student can find out about an abundance of events happening today on her campus. There are many wonderful and advantageous features of these social networks and if used correctly, they can be extremely beneficial and powerful tools for millions of users. However, along with the many positive outcomes, there is an equally preeminent darker side that lurks beneath the glow of our screens. My own experience led me to discover the more sinister dangers of habitual connectivity to faraway friends. This particular kind of online connectivity can lead to an insidious, self-reinforcing cycle with both increasingly less capacity for and less capability of connecting with people in face to face interactions. The eighteen year old that commented to Turkle that someday hed like to learn how to have a conversation exemplifies this notion. On social networks like Facebook, we present the very best of ourselves, or at the very least, choose what parts of ourselves to reveal. It may looks like we are constantly in Disneyland and our real lives may differ significantly from that picture. If we do not have the skills to deal with or develop all parts of ourselves because we can more easily push the concept of developing ourselves away, how will we learn to engage with the whole personhood of other people and form the kind of deep and lasting bonds that comprise the most

William Deresiewicz, "The End of Solitude," in The Digital Divide (New York: Penguin Group, 2011), 312.

satisfying and supportive relationships. The challenge is to tap into a mode of self-reflection, using social networks in a way that raises the possibility for increased human interactions as well as taking a plunge into offline activities that help us develop the art of real conversation. We can both better ourselves and better others when we have these skills. Is it Disneyland? Not all the time. When its the live and in person realm were talking about, the thrill of blasting off for a roller coaster ride might well be accompanied by the real-world ick factor of sticky cotton candy in your hair or the pain of blisters on your feet. But this live world also has what the digital life cannot match - the possibility of gaining the satisfaction of seeing and sharing the physical expressions of pure joy and real connections.

Bibliography Deresiewicz, William. "The End of Solitude." In The Digital Divide, 307-11. New York: Penguin Group, 2011. Foer, Jonathan Safran. "How Not to Be Alone." NYTimes.com. June 8, 2013. Accessed June 20, 2013. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/09/opinion/sunday/how-not-to-bealone.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0. Haisha, Lisa. "Is Your Facebook Addiction a Sign of Loneliness?" HuffingtonPost.com. April 13, 2010. Accessed June 18, 2013. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-haisha/is-your-facebookaddictio_b_533530.html. Marche, Stephen. "Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?" TheAtlantic.com. April 2, 2012. Accessed June 25, 2013. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/is-facebook-making-uslonely/308930/. Rosen, Christine. "Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism." In The Digital Divide, 172-88. New York: Penguin Group, 2011. Turkle, Sherry. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. New York: Basic Books, 2011. Turkle, Sherry. "Connected, But Alone?" Lecture. April 2012. Accessed June 22, 2013. http://www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_alone_together.html.