Facebook’s mission, according to its company page, is to “give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected…”
As humans, we are creatures of need, specifically the need to belong, to feel loved and to be connected. Facebook makes us feel like we belong through our increasing Friends lists, our newsfeed that runneth over and likes and comments getting tossed back and forth, mimicking a great conversation. It is a platform that conveniently gathers people into one area—making it a one stop shop for us to feel connected.
However, Facebook friends aren’t really so much friends as they are social commodities. The more you collect, the more popular you are and the higher your worth is. Is this real connection? When people are on the bus or in transit, instead of talking to the passengers beside them and actually making a face-to face connection, they choose to be on Facebook, scrolling through their newsfeed, watching for their friends’ activities.
Real connection fosters sharing of life narratives, experiences and opinions. I believe there is some value to being reminded and cognizant of the fact that the connection Facebook espouses is only a pale imitation of the real connection we can have, sans the screen. We have to understand that real connection isn’t made through social media sites. Real connection is made through shared experiences–personally greeting someone a happy birthday or a get well, getting out of our own comfort zones and saying the first hello, not hiding behind screens at awkward situations, talking about important issues instead of sending it out as a status. Turkle mentions in her TED talk: “We are lonely, but fearful of intimacy. Connectivity offers, for many of us, the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship.”
Real friends may have demands that our Facebook friends (aka virtual strangers) may not. But that’s what REAL connection is. It is the giving of each other and the taking and the learning. This is the process that forms and gives birth to life narratives. Do you think social media sites can create life narratives as well? How? Is there a difference between the life narratives that an online and a personal connection may create?
Hi Charice! You have made shrewd observations and I agree with you especially when you question the quality of the relationship and connection that we have with others when we tend to privilege our online FB profiles over face-to-face connections. Your words reminding us that we need to be cognizant that the “connection Facebook espouses is only a pale imitation of the real connection we can have” made me pause and reflect. I think these words connect well with what our class blogger this week, Patrick Connolly, has noted regarding whether one’s FB profile is an “illusion of their actual self” (in Patrick and Callie Hitchcock’s blogs). Both our views seem to follow along the same line of thought and I wanted to expand on Patrick/ Callie’s concept of our virtual selves. What I want to suggest is that we may not simply be creating identities on FB but we are also putting forth a virtual FB self — a self that connects with others, is social and constantly joins groups. In other words, interacts and connects with others in a way that we should not simply be doing virtually, but also physically. The TED Talk you referenced about how the “connectivity provides the illusion of companionship” is an interesting idea especially in reference to this New Yorker by Malcolm Gladwell (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/04/small-change-3) where he essentially talks about the political implications of using FB as a platform for political mobilization for protests such as the Iranian Green Movement or even the Arab Spring. He suggests similar problems that can arise with FB creating weak ties; thus, making political revolutions based around FB or social networking unsuccessful. Thinking bigger, what do you think could be the potential implications of having weak ties transform the way that we connect with one another in the world? Or having a virtual self essentially define our ‘life narrative’ with their standardized questions of i.e. how old are you and what is your favourite movie?
Hi Vivian. Thank you for leaving this insightful comment. I do agree that Facebook not only fosters a weak connection/relationship but also makes us create virtual selves on Facebook. In fact, I think these two work in a cause-affect way. When one puts forth a virtual self, it is inherently a deviation of one’s real self. Therefore, whatever ties will result from that is going to be fake/virtual and weak as well. A video I recently watched explores the theme of a virtual identity as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fz1BMCpPCzM. This video shows that the with a man, who is having a miserable time at life, pretends that he is having a great one through his pictures and posts on Facebook. With each new post, he gets more and more likes (which gives the impression that he is getting more support, that he is liked by more and more people). But in reality, he is just a lonely man, with a downward spiralling life and no one knows about it. His real life narrative is different from the digital one he is portraying, which leads me back to the worry: If we start counting digital lives as credible life narratives, how “real” will it be?
Note: We would have to unpack certain terms like real, virtual and weak though, if we plan to create a clearer picture/argument.
Hi Charice, I wish I was notified of your comment earlier but thank you for sharing that video — I thought it was quite insightful and it does hint towards the fact that we all take on so many identities depending on social context. That video makes me wonder if there even is a clear demarcation between a “real” vs. a “fake” self? Or at one point, does our “fake” digital selves suddenly become a “real” and “authentic” identity?