When I return home for breaks or even meet my mom for lunch, I am struck by the difference in perspective we each have on technology in our society. To my mom and many people in her generation, Facebook and texting have led to an intense communication that borders on unhealthy.
This new ability to communicate instantly and easily at all times has sparked research, social change, privacy issues and outrage.
Dr. Sherry Turkle, a prominent MIT professor who specializes in technology and society, expresses concern with how a new generation of teenagers and college students use technology to create a double life and false relationships.
With Facebook, for example, Turkle postulates that people can try on different aspects of a personality in an unnatural way. Psychologists Laura Buffardi and Dr. Keith Campbell from the University of Georgia believe that the way a person uses Facebook can show narcissism (a high number of pictures, links to personal websites and a large group of Facebook friends are all warning signs).
Furthermore, researchers are suggesting that the ease of impersonal communication via text messages and social media sites like Facebook has made the younger generations much less empathetic than their predecessors.
In addition, recent concerns about privacy, particularly regarding Facebook, have made national headlines.
While I am irritated by apologies through a text message, I also believe that our “dangerous” new technology has given my generation efficient and beneficial means of communication.
In my opinion, our technology makes us more efficient in a country that becomes faster paced every day.
Like everything else, now socializing can be done on the go.
Social media and easy communication also played an essential role in last year’s Jasmine Revolutions that deposed tyrants and initiated reforms. China has encountered trouble for its attempts to censor the Internet, tweets and texts.
Our new forms of communication allow for an easier, if different, means of socializing as well as fomenting social change for the masses.
In my experience, the biggest conflict with using technology in a social setting stems from an ambiguity about proper etiquette. There is not yet a precedent for when it is appropriate to text in an informal social setting.
We know not to text in class (although many of us break that rule), but is it okay to text or use Facebook at a party? And how much of our information on Facebook and other social sites is private?
When Facebook launched “Facebook Beacon,” which posted recent third party purchases on users’ walls by default, users rebelled and Facebook self-regulated by shutting down the program. Founder Mark Zuckerberg even apologized publically.
This difference of opinion on social media can be partly attributed to a generational resistance to new technology. Ease of communication is not completely good or completely bad; it just needs formal and informal regulation. This new age of communication is similar in ways to the societal change brought about by the Industrial Revolution.
It brings about great progress and efficiency in some ways, but there are also dangers. Legal precedents will most likely be set by our current leaders, but today’s college students will have to decide the informal etiquette for themselves. In what circumstances and settings is it appropriate to use any of our various methods of communication?
So the next time you reach for your phone, think about what your actions say, rather than your text.
Paul is a junior majoring in voice performance.
