Aaron DeVera FHS InFlight Issue 1 October 2010

“Digital Isolation: How the Social Network Drives Us Apart”

It should go without saying that Facebook is big. If it were a country, it would be the 3rd most populous in the world. Together, these people spend 700 billion minutes checking the social network for updates on their profile and their friend’s profile, and by the time you finish reading this sentence, 700 more status updates will have been posted on the site. Although it didn’t create the social network, Facebook has become the archetype of the new wave of internet communication. And just as easy it is to say Facebook is big, it is also easy to say that the larger the social network grows, the bigger differences in behavior we begin to experience. It may be subtle- maybe the way one talks to another online, typing in shortened abbreviated slang- but as more people become more outward with their Facebook, changes in personality begin to develop. The profiles that are created are available to the users’ manipulation. While its sole purpose is to simply express and communicate among a selected social community, anyone can easily hide behind a self-created image of what they want to be. This turns their facile accounts and profiles into an online persona. Everything uploaded to the site, whether it be pictures, statuses, or just a short biography, has the potential to be manipulated by the user to convey some sort of outward appearance or message pertaining to the user’s personality. whether its a form of expression or a way to hide, there are countless devices on Facebook to exhibit a coveted semblance. “People’s profile become the Christmas cards you get at the end of the year,” says Kurt Richey, English teacher. “They post the parts of their life that sound better, leaving out their problems and true daily life.” Although the omission of every minute detail does not always upset other users, most students identified that constant, outward posts about one’s exploits are only a nuisance in the fact that the person constantly says what they think without regard to other’s reactions and also awkward in the fact that the user might be revealing too much information. “They’re essentially wearing their heart on their sleeve,” says Mr. Richey. “I’m sure it gets annoying.”

When a small percentage of students decide to create a Facebook, blog, or Twitter account, they take their registration as a new found privilege to preach from a virtual soapbox, albeit with good intentions or without any conscious knowledge of the sort of ‘digital rights’ they had just attained. “This whole wave of individual-focused technologies is encouraging a kind of cult of the self,” says Matt Wranovics (’12). “They allow people instant validation for all of their thoughts and concerns, and that makes us forget that we’re all part of a giant unit and we have to learn to live together.” In a survey conducted on campus, most Foothill High School students identified the most annoying online behavior as other users taking advantage of their potential online notoriety and making outward, often offensive, statements that make other people uncomfortable. “I hate when people brag about illicit activity, be it through racy photos or posts. It’s like they’re proud to be doing inappropriate things, and I find that immature,” one anonymous student said. This behavior, whether it be perpetrated by many or few, leaves an uncomfortable experience for the users who interact on social networking websites. People’s personalities begin to extend, grow, and pervert themselves when they reach the digital world, bringing out otherwise uncharacteristic attributes in the users who interact with them, whether those users are trying to defend a point of view or refute a post for the sake of annoying the original poster. This is not the sort of behavior the social network was planned to instigate; these bodies of information and communication were created to bring people closer together. Is it loss of social values, a change in standards, a change in etiquette that further alienate our own friends into digital isolation? Surely though, any sort of regressive trend in society does not account for our actions we take today. “I once read a story about a board of teachers discussing a new technology that they feared would destroy the learning process as they knew it,” Mr. Richey added. “What they were discussing was the invention of the mechanical pencil. We may have a fear of new technology, but as much as we fight it always gets incorporated into society; all we can do is watch how we use it.”