Is Facebook bringing us closer together, or pushing us further apart?
Whatever the reason may be, we all use Facebook on a regular basis.
But we have never spotted to ask the question, is Facebook bringing us together or pushing us apart?
Aaron Balick explores this in abridged version of his original post which you can read here.
For most, the answer to this question is obvious. Facebook brings us together. It puts us in touch with those we lost touch with years ago; it makes us searchable to those who want us to be in their lives; it keeps us in closer contact with those from whom our news comes only from annual Christmas cards; it allows us to see the daily lives of those who live far away. The list goes on.
But does the technology have other consequences? Facebook has the capacity to make us feel left out. It opens up a world in which we can peer into others’ lives and in many cases, makes us feel even further away. It can induce envy by requiring that we compare our lives to others that may seem more exciting.
I have described the interaction between “false selves” and “personae” and how Facebook enables us to engage in the world from the perspectives of these psychological entities. In another post I warned that the ‘ego’ is not the same as the ‘self’ and that social networking tends to focus on ego expression at the expense of expression of the fuller ‘self’. I argued that this dynamic was not fundamentally a bad one, but one that we needed to be conscious and aware of.
Despite privacy settings, Facebook is a public space. This means that we ‘show up’ on Facebook using our public faces. This is no different than how we show up at work or social events. We all have a social face. However, we can forget this in ourselves and in others, and be fooled into believing what we are showing and seeing on Facebook is ‘the real me’ – it is not, it is an aspect of the ‘real me.’
Technology is tempting and seductive. We utilise it like some kind of virtual appendage, and when it starts to feel like an appendage, say, an extension of the arm, we don’t really register that it is not what it seems to be. That is, it is not an extension: it is the public world. Sherry Turkle (2011) uses the sociologist David Reisman’s concept of “the other directed self” noting that Facebook and other social networks take the other directed self to a higher power, she terms it “hyper other directedness” (176-7). This means that we develop a persona with the unconscious intention that it be pleasing to others.
I would alter this term slightly and call it “other ego-directedness”. I do this because I don’t believe the whole self is other directed, and it is these aspects of the self that get left behind. While the social network pays handsome dividends to the other directed ego, my concern goes out to these less public facing aspects of selfhood. What happens to our private selves, those aspects that aren’t so readily “shared” “liked” “posted” and “updated.”
Turkle (whom I’ve quoted a lot and give high praise to: you should read her book Alone Together) states the following:
Technology gives us more and more of what we think we want. These days . . . one might assume that what we want is to be always in touch and never alone, no matter who or what we are in touch with . One might assume that what we want is a preponderance of weak ties, the informal networks that underpin online acquaintanceship. But if we pay attention to the real consequences of what we think we want, we may discover what we really want. We may want some stillness and solitude (p. 284-5)
So how do we find a way to be ourselves before we share ourselves? This is a complicated issue because I don’t believe we can find ourselves in isolation, we find ourselves between people. But we need to find ourselves in the real world between person and person – to register their faces, to compare notes, our histories, our memories, our personal narratives. This often invites how we can feel different from each other, and can invite conflict too – but conflict is not intrinsically bad – it is an absolutely necessary way that we find ourselves in the face of others.
The snippets we get on Facebook can make a nice addition to this, a pleasant and enjoyable connection; however, if we confuse our sharing egos with our private selves, therein trouble lies
Photo credit (cc) Minds Work.
