Is social media good or bad for relationships?
It's a question you've probably seen addressed more than a few dozen times since the "social media boom" of the mid-to-late 2000s. Our course instructor Aron Hsiao introduced this week's assignment by asserting that jokes and ironic critiques about social media's ostensible detriment to personal relationships have become so widespread that they've begun to verge on rhetorical cliché. As such, it should come as no surprise that if one were to Google a phrase such as "social media and relationships," one would find that think pieces aligning themselves with a negative stance on social media's effect on our the way we interact with one another comprise most, if not all, of the top results. I should know; I Googled that exact phrase myself, and the found that very first result was—surprise, surprise—a Time article titled, "Kim Stolz: How Social Media Is Ruining Our Relationships." The following is just a small sampling of headlines and excerpts belonging to some of the other results on the first page alone:
"Your social media habits could be hurting your marriage, according to a new study out of the University of Oxford's Internet Institute."
"Is Social Media Ruining Your Relationships?"
"Social Media Tips: Don't Let It Wreck Your Relationship"
"Now, couples say are [sic] splitting after only two years and nine months because of weird relationship perceptions due to excessive social media use."
"Is Social Media Sabotaging Real Communication?"
These headlines and excerpts have been culled from articles published by seemingly reputable and diverse publications such as Huffington Post and Forbes, and yet, it appears that their authors swear by the notion of social media's negative impact on our human relationships unanimously. It seems to me as though the popularity of this stance—that social media usage is harmful to our "real life" relationships—can be attributed, at least in part, to its position as the default "intelligent" response to the cause célèbre that is social media. There is a debate here, but it's one-sided.
The question, then, remains: Is social media good or bad for relationships? It's perhaps safe to say, at this point, that a well-substantiated case has been made for the latter option of the binary. In Time's article "Kim Stolz: How Social Media Is Ruining Our Relationships," Kim Stolz, author of the book Unfriending My Ex: And Other Things I'll Never Do, expounds her argument that social media is indeed detrimental to our relationships.
Stolz says that the rise of social media is "definitely correlated" with the rise of narcissism in our society. We derive our self-worth from "how many likes we get, how many followers we get, [and] if someone texts us back," and the problem, Stolz says, is deeper-seated than one might think:
"[...] I think when you see your phone light up from across the room, it's that ping of dopamine in your system. You get that euphoric, excited feeling, and I think that's addictive. Now we [use social media far more frequently] [...] the more we do it, the more we [receive updates], so it becomes a very addictive process."
Stolz argues that our social media usage affects two very important facets of our mental well-being as individuals: our self-worth, and more generally, our mental physiology. When asked whether she thinks social media negatively affects our relationships with others, Stolz responded:
"Yeah, I think a lot of relationships have been ruined by one person's addiction to social media. [...] [Sometimes our social media addiction] simply means that you get home at night to spend time with your significant other and you have nothing to talk about because you've spoken about everything all day through social media or you've looked through each other's social media feeds.
There's an emerging body of research that shows that when you stop having offscreen interaction, you lose empathy. You lose the ability to have genuine reactions to real problems and real things."
Kim Stolz's argument here raises several distinct social issues with which detractors of social media typically associate its ubiquity: its usage may negatively affect our physiology, potentially even manifesting itself in an addiction; it can turn us into narcissists and self-obsessives; it can negatively affect our capacity for empathy; and it can also have the undesired (and ironic) effect of making us feel more lonely and debilitating our capacity for social interaction rather than strengthening our social bonds. The latter point is especially significant with respect to the argument that social media negatively affects our relationships: essentially, the more we use social media, the greater the distance grows between us and the people we care about.
Still, there is another common argument which lends itself to the criticism of social media as a means of interaction between people: social media equates to "fake" interaction, "fake" communication, and "fake" relationships—and, essentially, "fake" versions of ourselves, as opposed to our "real," offscreen counterparts.
In a blog post on Huffington Post titled Why Social Media Isn't Social, Thomas White expresses his belief that social media does two unfortunate things, the former of which is more relevant to our discussion: it allows us to "hold up masks." The "masks" we hold up, as White calls them, serve to project an image of ourselves which may not represent who we truly are "offscreen." Because we are spending more and more time online cultivating our "fake" online personas—the hours spent on Facebook in the U.S. went up 700 percent between 2008 and 2009, White says—and putting them on display for friends, family, acquaintances, and strangers alike, we are thereby creating unreal expectations of the people we are and the people with whom we interact both on and offscreen, for both ourselves and those around us, to the detriment of "true" human interaction. "We're living behind these masks more and more," White says, calling our "wearing" these "masks" "the willful commodification of who we are."
The immediate benefits of social media, insofar as it can act to strengthen our social relationships, have always been quite apparent: it's now easier than ever before to stay in real-time contact with friends, family, and loved ones, even those who are thousands of miles apart. Old friends can become reacquainted, and new friendships can be forged. Social media can also facilitate healthy social interaction between people who may never meet in "real life." However, as its negative implications with respect to our social relationships and interaction with others become clearer with each passing day, it's important for us as a society to think about the extent to which we depend on social media, and further, how we think of social media. In my eyes, social media is about as "real" as you make it. The problem with these all of these different criticisms is that they are predicated on the presupposition that all users of social media treat it as something of a surrogate reality. If we can separate the two in our minds—our "realities" and our usage of social media—and remember to treat social media as a supplement to our lives rather than a platform through which we can live alternate versions of them, then we will always be able to reap social media's benefits, rather than become victims of its pitfalls.
Links:
http://time.com/2917916/kim-stolz-how-social-media-is-ruining-our-relationships/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thomas-white/why-social-media-isnt-social_b_3858576.html
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