I wanted to write
something about the riots and looting that happened in London recently,
but at present I don't have the time to compose such a heavy piece.
Besides, I've just realised something that I feel I need to write about.
One is never too young
to complain about technology. After all, everyone knows that sometimes
it's more of an inconvenience than an aid. On my part, I've realised
just how bad social networking sites are for me.
There's been a lot of
talk about the impact that social networking sites have on productivity
and efficiency, but that's not the problem that I have. I don't spend
much time on Facebook—the only social networking site I use
regularly—although I do have it open most of the time so I can
occasionally glance at it for a tiny relief from the boredom of work (or
of trying to do work). The longest time I spend on it is at the
beginning of each day when I catch up with what has been happening in my
social network while I was asleep.
But that's where the
problems begin. My so-called social network is an illusion. I know most
of the people whose names appear in my newsfeed, but I barely know some
of them, and many of them I've simply lost touch with. If this is a
social scene, it's the most distant social scene I've ever seen. Here
are people constantly telling me something about their lives in which I
have absolutely no part and no stake. Why do I even bother reading?
Social networking sites may be useful for keeping in touch with friends
and acquaintances, but this isn't a way of keeping in touch with them.
It might satisfy my
curiosity sometimes to read the newsfeed, but more often than not I have
no real idea about what is happening in these people's lives. What
people display on social networking sites is merely what they choose to
display. So in terms of finding out about the ins-and-outs of others'
lives, it's not very rewarding either.
This leads me to the
reason why social networking sites are actually bad for me: Reading all
about the fun that people are having is not good for my psychological
well-being at a stage in my life where it's largely uninteresting. Maybe
people go on Facebook and talk about or show how interesting their
lives are because they're looking to enhance their status. Maybe it's
just that at any one time, some people in my social network are bound to
be having a good time. Maybe people do complain as much about how much
their lives suck, but selectively I tend to pay attention to the
positive things they show because people's problems aren't interesting.
Whatever the reason for my seeing it, evidence of people having a good
time intensifies disappointment with my own circumstances and reduces
the satisfaction I feel with what I have.
The effect is to make
me feel less happy than I think I could be. I start looking for reasons
why my life is not as great. The truth is, of course, layered and
complex, but I'd blame my school, my work, my luck—I've blamed various
things for my relative misery. Then I'd start thinking of doing
something about my life so I could be like one of those people I read
about in my newsfeed. But if anything is clearly ineffective at helping
you improve yourself, it's the rather vague, incomplete and sometimes
misleading information about other people's lives that you see on social
networking sites.
The irony is, the more
uninteresting my life is at the moment, the more I need to look at
Facebook for relief from boredom. And thus I would sometimes experience a
downward spiral in which boredom becomes unhappiness and unhappiness
leads to the loss of interest in my own life. I think I know by now that
sometimes we just need to close the browser and go about living our own
lives, but it remains to be seen whether I can resist the temptation of
looking.
I suppose that's what
social networks are—a collection of waxworks of human life. It's unreal,
yet you can't resist looking in order to compare it with the real.
If this sounds
perilously close to our obsession with celebrities, maybe that's because
it is. So here's one more thought: Maybe a social networking site
functions like a tabloid, but one that affords ordinary people the
chance to be celebrities in their own right through the gossip mill that
is the newsfeed.
Now that's an
idea—people don't only worship celebrities; they also like to see
celebrities brought down to earth in the tabloids. So I guess I have two
options: I could simply close the browser; or I could pay more
attention to the whining I see on my newsfeed and feel the
schadenfreude. I have to say, that's a tough choice.
