English
Social media surround us every day. Facebook and Twitter are not only helping us to keep ourselves informed and maintain relationship with the people we know; the social media literally shape our lifestyle. Starting an experiment of seventy two hours without social networks, I could not even imagine the extent to which the social networks have penetrated into our everyday life and mindset. Looking ahead, I should tell that this experiment went successfully, and I learnt a lot about myself, my habits and lifestyle.
Having an account in all major social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Forsquare, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube, etc.), I didn’t consider myself as an “open networker”, following mostly people I know personally. It’s good to look through the updates sometimes; it creates a feeling of those people being present in my life with their thoughts, opinions and news. I don’t consider my social network ”friends” as true friends and wouldn’t spend much time on talking with them on the phone or meeting them. But social media builds a feeling of some kind of involvement into social life. Moreover, it’s much easier to share something, whatever it is, - a thought, an interesting article or funny picture I saw, - through social network instead of emailing a hundred of people.
Every new day starts for me with checking Facebook account and ends up late at night with looking through Twitter posts. I didn’t notice it before I tried this experiment. With every social networking session taking only a minute or two, I didn’t realize that I spend quite much time on web socializing during the day. Maybe, it takes hours per week. And during the deprivation experiment I got all this time available for any possible purpose.
I didn’t tell anyone about my intention to spend three days without social networks. The first morning my hand reached to the smartphone as usually, but I stopped myself. I noticed every attempt of my subconscious to send me to a social account. In the morning, before starting doing something important, in between chores, when I feel bored, when I need a pause, when I eat alone I a café. The most serious temptation awaited me when I’ve met my friends, and everyone, when the conversation died down, sat staring in their phones. But with time I got rid of the feeling that I’m missing something important. It was the same withdrawal syndrome depicted in reflections of Steven Corona (2012.)
I began to analyze what exactly I’m missing. Like Sam Laird (2011), I missed an ease of communication with my acquaintances I used to keep in touch mostly via social networks. These people and events of their lives became inaccessible for me. I noticed that the whole world of reposts, funny statuses and pictures doesn’t exist for me. Maybe I missed some important life milestones of some of the people I know.
At the same time, the advantages exceed the drawbacks. Even within this short period of time, I became more focused, have spent more time in live communication with family and friends and more involved in real life experiences. I spent less time on the computer, but managed to do everything I planned. I came to a conclusion, that checking social networks took a sufficient part of my time, so without it I have to spent much less time on sitting in front of my laptop. I walked, I read a book, and I watched a couple of movies. I received positive emotions of talking and laughing, realizing that nothing, neither words nor “emoticons”, can replace emotions, human intonations and prosody.
Without a constant looking into the smartphone it’s much easier to be “here and now”. I thought that people experience frustration with unnecessary comparison of their lives with “lives” of their acquaintances as they show it in the social networks. Internet allows people represent their lives in a way they want, so many of them share only success stories (real or not), post pictures from trips, parties, where everyone is happy and relaxed. This picture is one-sided and sometimes distorted. But we take it as a truth and compare our real lives with the bright picture our friends show us. It leads to disappointment, frustration and low self-esteem. Social network abstainers value their real life and pay attention to every aspect of it, not overrating socio-economic competition.
I’ve also learnt that social networks like, for example, Twitter, create shallowness of perception and loss of concentration. Reading short “tweets” or quick comments makes the brain adjusted to this type of information, and it becomes difficult to perceive long meaningful texts, to read books.
I understood that compulsive checking of media updates leads to the loss of focus, worse studying and working outcomes and, moreover, to problems with sleeping. It’s evidenced by the findings of various researches (Bolton, 2013.) During my experiment I slept better than ever. Being less tired and more focused, I paid more attention to people around me; it resulted in more warm and friendly relations. Social media, as it turned out, created a huge gap between me and my friends (Wortham, 2013), and only real life communication managed to fill this gap.
Social media managers state that the mission of these media is to assist people in building closer relations with their friends and family members, but it seems that in reality quite the opposite happens. People feel more alienated.
Social networks, to my opinion, are able to wean people think. There’s no need to think a lot, to write something unique, if there’s an opportunity to re-post something appropriate to your mood. There’s no use to write something long, if everybody got used to pay attention to pictures or short messages. It, to my opinion, inhibits creativity and develops conformism, especially in youth. Living three days without social media gave me much free time that can be used for thinking, analyzing, planning a life and moving forward.
I don’t want to delete my social accounts completely, I enjoy an easiness they offer and value the social capital they allowed me to build. But I will not invest much time substituting real life communication with a virtual one.
Online communities help people – the social animals - “to take care of their need for social interactions” (Berger, 2012.) Social media are important in keeping track of significant events, keeping in touch with many people, building preferences in consumption and relationships with companies and brands. They are incredibly beneficial, especially for Y-generation people, who are mobile and multi-tasking. But unwittingly people became more dependent on the social media than they could imagine a couple of years ago, and this dependence is an alarming sign, as the media become more and more ingrained in our everyday activities and mindset.
Modern technologies such as mobile and social media blur the boundaries between nations and groups, on the way of thoughts and ideas; they facilitate socio-cultural exchange. But the technologically mediated communication should not substitute real life.
Works cited
Corona, Steven. How 30 Days Without Social Media Changed My Life. LifeHacker. http://lifehacker.com/5918784/how-30-days-without-social-media-changed-my-life.
Laird, Sam. J. My Life Without Facebook: A Social Experiment. Mashable, Dec 20,2011. http://mashable.com/2011/12/20/my-life-off-of-facebook/
Bolton, R.N. et al. Understanding Generation Y and their use of social media: a review and research agenda. Journal of Service Management, 2013, 24 (3), pp. 245-267 https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/dspace-jspui/bitstream/2134/13896/3/Understanding%20Generation%20Y%20and%20Their%20Use%20of%20Social%20Media_A%20Review%20and%20Research%20Agenda.pdf
Wortham, J. The Facebook resisters. The New York Times, 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/14/technology/shunning-facebook-and-living-to-tell-about-it.html?_r=0
Berger, A.A. Media and Society: A Critical Perspective Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, ©2012.
