The world today has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time. Information, a prized commodity, flows through social groups and across nations in the blink of an eye. At the push of a button, we can share the moments that define our lives. We can celebrate a new born child, a new job or a new relationship with hundreds, if not thousands, of our peers. This raises multiple questions. Why do we do this? What does this mean for the future?
The unfortunate and often difficult-to-swallow truth is that every status and every tweet is a rewording of one simple phrase: “Please acknowledge me.” We upload our entire lives to social media, allowing thousands to see every breath of our day for the soul purpose of sating ourselves. We take comfort in the likes and comments surrounding us. They act as a digital form of recognition. Whether it be criticism or praise, the attention-hungry middle schooler in all of us is comforted by it.
We all carry the weight of our day with us. It could be the argument with our girlfriend/boyfriend, the bad test grade we got or the scolding we got from our boss. When we hear the things people have gone through and realize we’ve gone through the same, we are given a catharsis. It’s relieving to know that we are not alone in our endeavors. It’s the hope that maybe—just maybe—we’re going to be okay.
Maybe. So we continue. For the solace we are given, we surrender ourselves to the Internet.
By doing this, we build massive corporate and government entities. Powered by vast amounts of personal information, they thrive off the population’s inability to put down their phones or turn off their computers. Even as we act as their fuel, we expect them to be transparent machines. We are outraged that we are losing privacy, angered by things such as the NRA and the proposed SOPA. Yet we still continue to upload, allowing our information to be sold to the highest bidder. Today, Google and Facebook already know who your friends are, who you email, where you live, where you work, what songs you listen to, what movies you watch, everything you search and where you are right now. Perhaps this is part of the allure.
Perhaps deep down we not only take pleasure in the community of social media, but in the ability to become a surrogate of it. The search for identity, authenticity and purpose are daunting subjects. Accepting what we are fed by social media is far easier and more convenient.
After all, society is always moving toward more convenience. When we were cold, we made fire. When our feet hurt, we built cars. When we didn’t want to read,we watched movies.
It isn’t difficult to imagine that when we don’t want to think… we will let others think for us.