Are we becoming "Alone Together"?

[EnglishLady]

Mail Jan 23

Online backlash: Facebook and Twitter 'make us less human and isolate us from the real world'


They call themselves social networking sites but now it appears that the likes of Twitter and Facebook could be downright anti-social.
A leading academic claims that the technology is threatening to dominate our lives, making us more isolated and ‘less human’.
Professor Sherry Turkle has even branded the use of the social networking sites a form of ‘modern madness’.

She argues that, under the illusion of allowing us to communicate better, technology is isolating us from real human interactions in a cyber-reality that is a poor imitation of the real world.

Professor Turkle, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in the U.S., is leading an attack on the information age with her book Alone Together.
The professor even suggests social networking can make us mad, citing ‘pathological behaviour’ she has witnessed, such as mourners at funerals checking their iPhones.

Her book is part of an intellectual backlash in America calling for the people to devote less time to sites such as Twitter.
Other American academics have criticised the growing trend of internet activity.

One, Professor William Kist, of Kent State University in Ohio, has cited the death in Brighton of Simone Back who posted her suicide note on Facebook at Christmas.
Not one of 42-year-old Miss Back’s 1,058 ‘friends’ on the site called for help. Instead they traded insults on her page.

However, defenders of Twitter and Facebook claim social media has many benefits and has, for example, led to more communication for people who are separated by long distances.

 

[TeamCaffee]

This is a topic that is debated in our family as two of us use facebook and texting often while the other two do not.

I have found that it is can be hard to stay in the here and now while with friends. I have become accustomed to easily asking a question of a friend who is far away as I do a person who is in the same room as I am.

Due to the solitary nature of our jobs the phone and Facebook make it very easy to stay connected with friends and even family members. I use this everyday and when I look back at my day I have communicated with many people that I would not have communicated with if I was still working at my 9 to 5 job due to time constraints.

What I have a problem with is when I am at home cannot disassociate myself from the truck and the way I communicate through out the day. I still use Facebook to see what is going on with friends and acquaintance's and use texting to ask questions of friends. This in ways had became a bad habit as I am not able to turn this off while at home and with family.

As a driver I have friends I talk to everyday and many times a day and if we are lucky we are able to see each other a few times a year. Bob had a friend he talked to for two years before he saw him again and he was not sure he would recognize him!

I believe using the forums, using facebook, and my phone keeps us from becoming to solitary in our lifestyles. I get a different prospective everyday from others doing the same thing we are which helps to keep me from dwelling on small things and to stay positive.

Bob and I are much more social then we were while raising our girls and having 9 to 5 jobs with lots of "face time" with co-workers and family. Through our ways of communicating we are able to keep up with friends and when we are in the same vicinity we often take the time to sit down and share a meal or a cup of coffee.

In my way of thinking Facebook and the Cell Phone have helped us to stay in communication much better then the days of no cell phone and using Park and View.

 

[layoutshooter]

I find this site useful on the truck. I don't come here nearly as often when I am home. I have much more to do at home and friends and family to do it with. I don't visit any other sites.

 

[highway star]

This reminds me of the criticism of video games when my kids were young. The worry was that kids would become isolated, social skills would go out the window, ect., when the reality, at least in my home, was the exact opposite. After school, our living room would typically have half a dozen kids playing Nintendo, getting along very well. One or two would be playing and the others would give tips and share game secrets. There was never any fighting over whose turn it was that I can recall.

Chicken Little: "The sky is falling. The sky is falling."

 

[EnglishLady]

Personally I'm not so sure on the Chicken Little theory for this one - anyone ever read Isaac Asimov, Robots & Empire?

With more & more "faceless" communication it does make one wonder what the future holds

 

[greg334]

Actually there was a study done a while ago by Yale or Purdue that found the more interaction without face time, the more isolated the person becomes - gaming, chat rooms and other computer type communications. That isolation becomes a problem when it has to do with children and young adults (I hate that term) because they need physical social interaction among themselves on different levels during different times. This problem leads to more of a suicide rate among isolated teenagers and when they reach into adulthood, extends to serious relationship problems and chemical abuse. The study used the isolation of Inuit children in Alaska using technology and other forms of non-physical contact as the reasoning behind the funding for the study and proved that the need for social interaction at almost every stage of our lives.

This isn't a truck thing, it is a people thing. The tools we use to keep contact with loved ones in the truck are not the issue, we can keep contact with everyone with a phone call - most likely the best form of communications. BUT I and others feel emails, facebook and twitter are very impersonal and very one way - no interaction in real time which the cell phone is able to do.

 

[Turtle]

This is just one of those things where there is a technological generation gap. The people who grew up and developed without e-mails and Twitter see these things as bad, because the younger generation is growing up and developing differently than the old farts did. The younger generation has never known a world without such technology and are growing up and developing in their own way within it. The kids who have the most problems are the ones who have old farts trying to get them to act and react to a different world, a world they've never known. The old farts don't like "different" and are trying to stem the tide of social evolution, but there's nothing they can do about it.

 

[EnglishLady]

This is just one of those things where there is a technological generation gap. The people who grew up and developed without e-mails and Twitter see these things as bad, because the younger generation is growing up and developing differently than the old farts did. The younger generation has never known a world without such technology and are growing up and developing in their own way within it. The kids who have the most problems are the ones who have old farts trying to get them to act and react to a different world, a world they've never known. The old farts don't like "different" and are trying to stem the tide of social evolution, but there's nothing they can do about it.

ROFL

Well I do not consider myself as you describe above, in any way shape or form (and yes I have been 21 yrs twice and a bit more LOL)
I do like the internet, cell phones and of course my xbox

But I believe the point that is trying to be made isn't what you are saying in your post, but rather with no or very little interaction how will the future generations cope.

 

[Turtle]

ROFL

Well I do not consider myself as you describe above, in any way shape or form (and yes I have been 21 yrs twice and a bit more LOL)

Oh, once you've reached "legal age" twice, you're definitely an Old Fart. There's no getting around that one. It used to be 30 ("Never trust anyone over thirty", and Logan's Run), but 40 is the new 30, dontcha know. You're out of touch with the younger generation, you think differently than they do because you were brought up in a different time and in a different world. It's a problem every generation faces. It's a age-old problem of the ages.

"Parents just don't understand" - The Fresh Prince

I do like the internet, cell phones and of course my xbox

Me, too, except I'm not a gamer. I've been on the Internet since before it was the Internet.

But I believe the point that is trying to be made isn't what you are saying in your post, but rather with no or very little interaction how will the future generations cope.

I said it in my post with, "The younger generation has never known a world without such technology and are growing up and developing in their own way within it." Future generations will cope in their own way, too. And it's likely to be in a very different way than we cope with things, in a way we can't understand. And because the older generation won't be able to understand it, they'll try and make the younger generation cope in ways the younger folks can't understand.

Who knows? One day delusional sociopath may become the norm, and terms will have to be redefined where people who like it face-to-face will become the weirdos of the day.

 

[chefdennis]

My kids were the "gamers" that we were told would also be anti social and have no people skills...wrong...I too believe this is a bit of a "chicken little ideal"....as turtle said, old farts don't like change, so they make stuff up to create issues...

 

[scottm4211]

I emailed this story to my wife. She yelled downstairs to me that she agrees with it.

 

[BillChaffey]

"Threatening to dominate out lives" I don't feel Face book or Twitter threaten my life. I've never used either one. I prefer to speak to my friends face to face or on the phone.

 

[Freightdawg]

You could go days at a time with no face to face interaction. We have self check outs in stores, and gas pumps where you just use your credit card. You don't have to talk to amyone. Pretty amazing!

 

[chefdennis]

ScottM wrote:

I emailed this story to my wife. She yelled downstairs to me that she agrees with it.

She would have yelled down to you quicker if you had "text" her....

 

[EnglishLady]

Oh, once you've reached "legal age" twice, you're definitely an Old Fart. There's no getting around that one. It used to be 30 ("Never trust anyone over thirty", and Logan's Run), but 40 is the new 30, dontcha know. You're out of touch with the younger generation, you think differently than they do because you were brought up in a different time and in a different world. It's a problem every generation faces. It's a age-old problem of the ages.

"Parents just don't understand" - The Fresh Prince


Me, too, except I'm not a gamer. I've been on the Internet since before it was the Internet.

I said it in my post with, "The younger generation has never known a world without such technology and are growing up and developing in their own way within it." Future generations will cope in their own way, too. And it's likely to be in a very different way than we cope with things, in a way we can't understand. And because the older generation won't be able to understand it, they'll try and make the younger generation cope in ways the younger folks can't understand.

Who knows? One day delusional sociopath may become the norm, and terms will have to be redefined where people who like it face-to-face will become the weirdos of the day.

Its taken me this long to stop laughing

I forgot to say 21 yrs twice and a bit...... then half it

IMO I still do not think some understand the point being made though.
Its not our generation or probably the next that is the worry.

Like turtle says,
"Who knows? One day delusional sociopath may become the norm, and terms will have to be redefined where people who like it face-to-face will become the weirdos of the day"

Isaac Asimov's Robots & Empire explains everything

 

[Turtle]

We have self check outs in stores...

Something I refuse to do. If I wanted to work as a checkout cashier at the grocery store or Walmart, I'd put in an application there. If they want to pay me 10% off my purchases to do self check-out, I'll do it, otherwise forget it. I go to these places to buy stuff, not to work.

I once went into a grocery store somewhere at like 1 or 2 in the morning, and all the had was self-checkout. The manager on duty and I had a discussion about it. He said it was to reduce costs (which I interpreted as "increase profits") and to reduce prices (which I interpreted as a load of crap because I know better). I ended up leaving a shopping cart full of groceries sitting there and walking out. At least $100, because I've never gone to the grocery and gotten out for less than that.

Some people like the self check-out, I'm just not one of them.

There is a place (several of them in LA and Phoenix and Vegas) where all the stores are 100% self check-out, and I don't have a problem with that, because they were opened up that way specifically to have reduced prices. And they are absolutely cheaper across the board than other groceries. But cutting current jobs just to make a few extra bucks, without actually lowering the prices, is a load of crap.

Sorry, back to our regularly scheduled antisocial chatter.