Turkle and Photo and Video Social Media Tools

As I wrote in my review of Sherry Turkle’s book Alone Together, the author’s primary concern is what technology is doing to us. The tone of her book is ultimately one of concern. She feels that these days, although we do decide how and what role technology will play in our lives, more often we allow it to influence our routines, impulses and emotions, often more than we realize. As Turkle notes, “We don’t need to keep computers busy; they keep us busy” (279). She describes the gamers who are so addicted to play that they stay home from work to play a newly released title. She talks to folks who acknowledge the Pavlovian effect that an email notification has on them, but are powerless or unwilling to change it.

The video and photo tools available through social media allow us to share and connect with people worlds away. They enable us to know what friends are doing miles away - down to the most minute details. Every day we’re fed scrolling updates of what friends ate for brunch, what words their babies spoke that day, and where they went on vacation. At first glance this might seem like a good thing, but maybe less so when you realize that our brains are becoming rewired to want more of this stuff. Facebook and Instagram users scroll through endless news feeds without any recollection of what they saw. Now there are apps that allow people to break their social media addictions by simulating these scrolling news  feeds with meaningless non-content. Is this brain bubblegum enriching our lives any? Is knowing what our friends ate for breakfast bringing us any closer to them in any real meaningful way? Turkle would be skeptical.

She asserts that the amazing technology of social media, with its promise of worldwide understanding, sharing and collaboration, have actually left us feeling more isolated than ever before. In the last chapter of her book, she offers some final analysis of technology’s all-encompassing influence and pressure on us:

Online, we easily find ‘company’ but are exhausted by the pressure of performance. We enjoy continual connection but rarely have each other’s full attention. We can have instant audiences but flatten out what we say to each other in new reductive genres of abbreviation. We like it that the Web ‘knows’ us, but this is only possible because we compromise our privacy, leaving electronic bread crumbs that can be easily exploited, both politically and commercially. We have many new encounters but mat come to experience them as tentative, to be put ‘on hold’ if better ones come along. Indeed, new encounters need not be better to get our attention. We are wired to respond positively to their simply being new.

And so “newness” may be all that these tools offer us. Whenever we feel like we need something new in our lives, we need not seek out new experiences or make new friends. There is an endless stream of photos and video, photos of others having thrilling experiences, available in our pockets. Each time our thumbs flips through more, we get a shot of that happiness brain chemical dopamine.