Dear Dafnis N. Coudounaris,
You have certainly hit the hammer on the nail concerning the out come of addiction to social media. as time goes on, older generations become disconcerted about the negative effects addiction to social media. as you have rightly predicted, face-to-face communication will suffer greatly because dramatic advances in technology is unavoidable. I guess the price for progress is sometimes very high, and in this case, the pay off is frightening.
Best regards,
R. Biria
Dear Dafnis N. Coudounaris,
I think that face-to-face communication has a new mediator: social media. It can help us to connect with another people, to organize activism activities and to discover other realities. This tendencies of social media addiction must be treated, but technology is not to blame.
Please, let me introduce an agenda building model trough Twitter.
The potential cognitive impact is even more disturbing to me than the social impact. It saddens me to see people in an aesthetically stimulating environment, like the historical center of Guanajuato, Mexico (a UNESCO World Heritage Site), or the panorama of sun-bathed mountains in front of the Arts Building at the University of Guanajuato, hunched over the tiny screens of their "intelligent" phones, seeking a digital "fix." It looks like addiction to me.
I probably spend too much time online, for example at ResearchGate, so when I get up from my desk, the last thing I want to have with me is a portable communication device. I don't own any smaller than a notebook, and I don't plan on owning one in the future. My goal is to live the rest of my days without a cell phone, Facebook account, or credit card. So far I have succeeded.
Dear Dafnis: Social media has given us, literally, the whole world. I would never renounce the friends I have met from faraway places thanks to Facebook and ResearchGate, for example. Isolation is not due to social media. In fact, social media has come to remedy the isolation rampant in cities and remote communities. In social media people learn to express themselves better, and more amiable, and learn a lot from people from other places. I always wonder why people think that social media disrupts everyday conversation. It happens like that during the first months of "immersion", and then it levels. That is what I see among my family and friends, among my students and colleagues too.
Best regards, Lilliana
It's interesting to read about individual experiences on this thread. I'm hoping that people who study this important aspect of contemporary life will post recent scientific research on the social and/or cognitive effects of social media, so that we can confront our personal views with the evidence and make any necessary adjustments.
Liliana, from a personal, empirical perspective, the disruptive aspect of mobile communication devices (using social media or other methods of communication) is ubiquitous. Examples include people interrupting face-to-face conversations to answer phones calls or text messages; people with their eyes fixed on their mobile devices, bumping into other people or objects on the street; drivers having accidents while communicating; ringtones spoiling concerts, theatrical presentations, and movies; students being distracted from classroom activities; etc. Perhaps part of the perception of "leveling" that you mention may be that these disruptions have become so frequent that they are now seen as acceptable, or "normal," as George has pointed out.
Here, I think the problem is not so much the social media in itself, which as you say brings great benefits, but the fact that many people carry devices around in their pockets and their use often interferes with other, more essential aspects of their lives.
"adiction" is not good in any cases. So we should change the word. Social media surely brings deeper experience when we have face to face communication but can not replace face to face communication. Anyway it's just one of the means of communication, it depend on you the communicator and your partner, I think.
I find the article 'The autistic society' by Baruch quite nice and though provoking. Looking at my own kids, Yehuda makes me think and keep eye on them to make sure that their on-line social interaction stays within certain limits.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378720600000677
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