A Paradigm Shift

Thanks to Rainie and Wellman, I had a bit of a paradigm shift this week. I have personally had the view that social media has replaced a lot of the good old fashioned face-to-face relationships with more loose superficial connections. I think that my viewpoint has been skewed by my personal experiences and I have certainly identified a bias through these readings. It seems to me that many of my longtime friends seem to find it sufficient to just post on my Facebook wall or briefly type “Hi”, or “Happy Birthday”, and I do not personally see much value in these interactions. I have felt like social media has put some constraints and limitations on my personal relationships by making it ok to keep in touch via these sparse and shallow connections.  

Rainie and Wellman touch on the idea that quantity goes with quality, and I really appreciate this perspective. With social media, I have more relationships, more people in my network, and many more communication opportunities – this means that I have more people that are likely to support me in a time of need. It was helpful to picture an online community as a fluid personal network that is constantly shifting and connecting me to many different resources. It was also neat to think about technological determinism and how accelerated globalization is inevitable. I imagine that my online network will reach even farther in years to come, and this should enable even more benefits to come my way.

I love the idea of more diversity, more choices, stress-free maneuverability, and building trust with different people in different groups. Oftentimes the individualistic aspect of social media seems prominent to me, but Rainie and Wellman reclassify this idea as ‘flexible autonomy’. It is true that we have more freedom for personalized interactions in the online world and there are absolutely no limits to this freedom. It would be impossible to have a large number of meaningful interactions in the physical world, but social media makes this simple. The best part about social media is the efficiency – the ability to have numerous quick exchanges with many people on the drop of a dime. This quantity grants us the opportunity for more quality.

I also appreciate the idea of the ‘networked self’ being adaptable and having the power to reconfigure itself at any time depending on the situation at hand. It is true that we already present different aspects of ourselves to different people in the physical world, so this is theoretically no different in the online world – just easier! The amoeba analogy was perfect! We each have a core nucleus, but we also have many pseudopods attached to our core that are rapidly changing based on our personal needs.

All in all, Rainie and Wellman gave me a brighter outlook on the advent of social media and I am honestly excited to see what the future may hold. The idea of health organizations being able to share resources and information pertaining to chronic diseases is a great example that they brought up. Knowledge is power and now this type of power is accessible to everyone with access to the Internet. It will be exciting to see how artificial intelligence, wearable technology, nanotechnology, and virtual reality technologies change the way we interact and make connections online. How do you all picture the future of social media with these advances in technology? Will we be able to make even more connections? Do you think Dunbar’s ‘social brain’ theory will still hold up? Do you think technology will be able to improve our information-processing capacities? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!