Final Report

INTRO 
When I told someone for the millionth time that I was not on Facebook they’re response was very typical. "What, do you live in the wilderness or something?" Me not being on Facebook was not part of some kind of Walden pipe dream, where I was this high and mighty intellectual who could forgo the hustle and bustle of modern life. I enjoy the hectic nature of modern life and find beauty in its chaos so that was not the reason. But what was? I set out to see how Facebook affects my life and the lives around me. 

There was occasionally moments of feeling noble when I was the hold out in a sea of conformists. That satisfied some egotistical need, sure. But I did feel like a burden when my class would be arranging a fundraiser and event and I was the one who had to have all the discussions emailed to me. It would almost be the equivalent of taking an online class and instead of using the internet, its all done in mail correspondence. What a hassle.  

I caved a few months before the new year in 2014. I didn’t get Facebook, but I told myself and several friends I would officially join the club on the first day of 2015. From then on, my life has not been quite the same. The process was slow, and it wasn’t until I caught myself wasting away mindlessly on the site, having been awake, unmoving, in bed for at least two and a half hours, having accomplished nothing. 

The feeling was not unlike that of alcoholics who refer to moments of clarity. I felt then that I was this junkie for social media. Studies have linked the release of dopamine to the receiving of information. An article in the Scientific American states that “...obviously, having access to more relevant information – such as knowing where the food is located - allows animals to make better decisions. Furthermore, having access to such information might give us better control over our environment, thus increasing our chances of survival” (Lane).

Its no wonder then that we are finding ourselves constantly seeking information like “What has Johnny been up to? Oh he went to Cancun? What did he do there?” and before you know it you’ve been sucked in to a whirlwind of mostly useless information. And could you not have simply asked Johnny these questions himself? Our evolutionary traits have driven us to desire sociability, but our social traits have made us more introspective and cut off because of the advent of Social Media. I don’t think our biology was prepared for this. 

FACEBOOK FRAMING 
It goes without saying a very large chunk of our lives are conducted on social media. A consequence of this, is that we have created a type of separated dualism. We have our life, then we have our social media life. Our social media life gives us a control we lack in our real lives, and its this control I think we are addicted to as well. Facebook gives you the ability to edit your life, to snip out the bits that don’t fit your framing of your life, or the life you wish to present to others. To me, this is almost the same as lying by omission.    

Have you ever seen a place like New York in a movie, and upon visiting it you are disappointed because it did not look like it did in the movie? Its the framing of the image that endows it with a point of view. The director of the film saw something in that shot of the Empire State Building down 5th Ave and when you see the movie, you see it though his eyes. We now have the power to have other people look at our own lives, through our eyes, not their own. Look at this part! But not that part. When I am on Facebook, I don’t see people, I see reflections of people in their own mirrors. 

This fantasy life makes anything possible. Little white lies are rampant on Facebook. Friends of mine with take photos and write ambiguous captions that will imply something that is ultimately false. For instance, lets say I see a selfie on Facebook of a girl I know looking very dolled up and behind her is a red carpet up the steps of what appears to be a large stone building and several gorgeous women in sparkly gowns. And lets say the caption says “Fun at the Met Galla!!xoxox!!!” Now, I would assume, from that combination of information that this girl was at the Met Galla, a very prestigious opportunity. I would be impressed. I would probably like the photo, and so would around a hundred other people, also impressed. But she wasn’t at the Met Galla. She was just walking down 5th Ave and saw a photo op and took it, and is then deceptive through ambiguity. 

I myself have posted photos I found on the internet, just because I thought they were cool or funny or whatever, and for some reason, the assumption is that I took the photo. Because of this I have since including credit when available but are people really that naive? When Harry Potter finds the notebook of Tom Riddle in the the “Chamber of Secrets,” he converses in writing with the mysterious stranger in the book without knowing its Voldemort. Is that not unlike a chat room on Facebook. You can never really know who is on the other end. 

FACEBOOK & EMPATHY 

More importantly, our ability to relate to others has changed drastically as well. Now that we can take social media with us, we are more attuned to living in our reflective lives than in our own. When a tragedy like the shooting at the night club in Orlando, the Paris attacks, and this rapist at Stanford, social media gets buzzing. It's amazing to be reminded that everyone has opinions and feeling on just about everything. Everyone wants to put in their two cents. But are these opinions unique? It seems to me everyone is tapped in an ever increasing echo chamber as people's points of view being leveled out to conform and belong.

People on social media seem to feel obligated to express sympathy for a tragedy before knowing much about it. All they need are the basic words SHOOTING, RAPE, TERRORIST, OUTRAGE! And then they see their friends posting paragraphs about it and often times their own personal connection (arguably taking attention off of said tragedy and on to them; "what about ME?") By following the fold I think we rob ourselves of the ability to develop individual feelings. Just like language is so pervasive we literally cannot think without it, is our media and technology furthering a preoccupation with how we are perceived by others?

All of these anxious thoughts led me to shed Facebook for one week, just to see what happens.

FACEBOOK AND COMMUNICATION 

The difficult part was not communicating with the same amount of ease. Its hard to tell a lot of people at once about an event or party without Facebook. Even sending group emails can be tacky and overly official to my generation. There is however an element of interaction I get from all the different people I have to go through to get information out. 

In many ways, I’ve made two separate 180s and ended up back where I began this process. I initially thought fear of technology is overstated, then I began to side with the fearful crowd, and now after doing more research, I realize that technology is just like anything else, its all about how you use it. The real issues are with our own nature. 

If we are thinking in the realm of technology as an extension of our senses, or something that we are placing our intelligence on, we are attempting to make machines more human like.  The thing that Facebook is attempting to do is to deliver a very human experience, social interaction, through a medium of technology. This is where the basis for my initial fear and anxiety arose from. The lens of technology would obscure and loose the purity of interaction. 

It brings to mind Siri. Although far from perfect, Siri is very much like a electronic companion. In the movie 'Her,' we see a world where a man and a computer program actually fall in love. What is so profound about that movie, is that as creepy as it sounds, it makes computer-human copulation beautiful. Our unification has gone to the next level. 

Currently a major issue with the media is not the interface, but the fact that it is controlled by so-called "brand ambassadors." These people seek to make a profit from monitoring the things that you search for. However, as the Huffington Post article "The Human Connection in the Digital World" states, "no one would care for content that doesn't resonate with their being"(Chan). While this is true, and I'm not one to delusionally fight the current, I can't help but feeling what resonates with most people is pretty vapid. 

This cooperate control seems like brainwashing to me, creating a large amount of conformity and designation in to groups. The illusion of a Facebook group is that it is a means of connection, but in fact it furthers isolation by creating and us & them situation. Instead of making machines more human, we are becoming more like machines; compartmentalized. 

I think the most negative thing I have found in my research and experimentation has been a large lack of empathy due to social media. People can insult others without any repercussion, the immediacy is lost. This is due I think to the ease of narcissism and creating of a false self, forgetting who we are. The media teaches you who to be. 

FACEBOOK LANGUAGE 

The element of language and communication, separate from poor empathetic results, had very positive findings on my end. The New York Times published an article that compared emojis to a "pictorial alphabet." In fact in Japan, emojis are used like characters in Eastern languages and hieroglyphics. For instance, in Japan, a knife, a fork, a question mark, and a smiley face can equal a dinner invitation. This to me, is a high form of communication. 

It beauty is in its simplicity. The study of experimental phonetics, as described by the Encyclopedia Britannica, is the study of language as it applies to physics, phycology, philosophy, ext. Basically, other fields not directly related to language. Similar to the ideas of Novak and cyberspace, researchers in the field of experimental phonetics will visualize the affect of language in the physical world, and the physical dimensions of speech. On the cognitive end, one of the most profound findings is that "speech conveys information in a redundant way. Experiments have shown that a listener need to attend to only a part of the information presented to him in order to understand it" (Britannica). 

The quick and efficient mode of communication that emojis offers us is exciting to me. I think it goes against Ong in that we are moving in to an oral society, because the art of conversing orally is on the decline by my observation. What is on the rise is a pure and pragmatic way of talking, a more purely emotional way that has the ability to encapsulate more emotional connotations than language. Some may fear the lack of specificity but to me the more ambiguous the better. 

FACEBOOK AND HEATH 

The connection end of things had some interesting results. When not on Facebook, I felt slightly more isolated, and not because I was missing a hollow fake social experience, but because Facebook is how I meet up with people! A Pew Center for Internet in American Life study found that social media actually facilitated in-person social interaction, and that people who used social media versus those who did not at all, had more frequent in person social interactions. 

My physical appearance has changed in relation to my use to social media. I think there is a double edged sword at play. In media, and especially on social media, it is common to body shame, but even more prevalent to to give this hollow praise. Every photo a girl I know posts tends to have at a very minimum 5-6 "OMG GORGE!" or something to that effect. Its frequency depletes its genuineness. So needless to say when you see your friends looking good and fit you would want to join the club. Even if only superficially to post the picture later to show that you ran your 5k today or whatever. 

So when I'm not on social media, it is significantly easier for me to have a positive body image and excursive for me and no one else. To be healthy, not to look hot. But back to the main question I'm still trying to answer, is it because of my own nature, or because of the medias affect on my life. 

CONCLUSION 

Ultimately I think I've gained more from Facebook than I give it credit for. Its helpful in its own right and has opened doors to me that would have otherwise been unavailable. It helps me and millions of others reach audiences around the world and support causes and meet people who share the same views or the exact opposite ones and these people can be engaged in an ongoing global conversation. But just like Uncle Ben in Spiderman says, "with great power comes great responsibility." We need to cultivate healthy ways to use technology, and just like we have accepted animals in to our greater global community, so too should be embrace technology.