If a picture’s worth a thousand words, the cover art of the July 23rd issue of the New Yorker [ed. 2012] is a critical disquisition. A middle class family poses for a photo on a sunny tropical beach. Given that this is the New Yorker, we can assume that they are Americans citizens, perhaps in Hawaii or the Bahamas. Presumably they are on holiday. The point that is implied by the image is that, whoever and wherever they are, their attention is somewhere else. Instead of celebrating the moment and being together, they have their heads bent over their mobile phones, texting, tweeting, checking status updates… Who knows, perhaps they are checking the weather. Whatever they are doing, they are not engaging with one another.The irony is palpable. To bring it into focus, let’s assume that these folks are using social media. Viewed this way, the image calls to mind a common criticism of social media. Social media, it is said, isolates us from one another even while it brings us together. In my classes on Philosophy and Social Media, I hear versions of this criticism all the time. Social media makes us slaves to our gadgets. It commits us to spending valuable time isolated from the people around us, texting, tweeting, posting, or just surfing feeds. The nub of it is that social media, in practice, is a solitary pursuit. Social media is supposed to bring us together, but in reality it sets us apart.
This criticism has merit. What worries me is how quickly people leap from this observation to the conclusion that social media isn’t social at all. It is true that there is a solitary aspect to social media. Anyone who has shared a train with a troop of early morning commuters knows that in public spaces, people use their mobiles as a means of isolating themselves from the people around them. Still, this shouldn’t lead us to question the social dimension of social media per se. On a behavioural level, tweeting, posting, sharing, commenting and liking are things that we do independently of one another. Understood on a psychological level, however, tweeting, posting, sharing, commenting and liking are not isolated activities at all. Tweeting, posting, sharing, commenting and liking are activities that we undertake in the presence of crowds. Insofar as they are informed by thought and invested with feeling, tweeting, posting, sharing, commenting and liking are intrinsically social activities.
Take another look at the picture of the family on the beach. I want you to imagine that each of these people is enjoying a unique online social experience. We might criticise them for their decision to engage with virtual crowds when they might otherwise be enjoying a special moment with their nearest and dearest. But setting aside this rebuke, think against the grain of the artist’s intentions and imagine that you are looking at four socially engaged individuals. There is no denying that this is a possibility. Why is it, then, that when we see people in the presence of one another using social media, we think first of all of the social experiences that they are missing out on having, rather than wonder what excellent experiences they are enjoying online? Why is it that when we see an image like this one, we immediately assume that we are looking at people who arenot engaged in a fulfilling social pursuit? Why do we devalue online social experiences?
It is true that not all online social experiences are fulfilling. But online social experiences can be fulfilling, and so we shouldn’t dismiss them out of hand. If we do dismiss online social experiences out of hand, it is probably because we don’t understand what makes them fulfilling in the first place. Many people take completely the wrong perspective on online social experiences. They misunderstand the nature of these exchanges. It is no wonder that they take a poor view of them.
Usually when we think about social life, we think about individuals meeting with other individuals in groups. Individuals meet with others to chat, exchange information, and transact with each other in various ways. This way of understanding social life is second nature to us, to the extent that we find it difficult to think about social experiences in any other way. Social media, on this view, provides a virtual space for individuals to meet with other individuals to undertake more or less the same kinds of activities that they conduct face-to-face. But since they are not face-to-face, these experiences can only be less engaging and rewarding than their real world alternatives.
Is this how you understand social media? If the answer is ‘yes’, it’s time for a conceptual upgrade.
by Tim Rayner, Philosophy for Change | Read more:
Image: Mark Ulriksen
