Communication as Entertainment, and Differences in Opinion

One of the central concepts behind most of the technologies powering the "constant connectivity" boom seems to be communication as entertainment. People have always interacted with others as a means of enjoying themselves, but all people inevitably find themselves alone for some periods of time, and historically, they found other ways to occupy themselves. They probably used to read books or hunt woolly mammoths or something.

Now, however, as soon as people get home from a night out with friends, they can log onto Facebook and talk to the same friends some more, except in a form that is more akin to small talk than deep conversation (which they presumably got out of the way while they were speaking in person). Small talk is not necessarily bad, but we might be better off reading books for fun instead.

A related example is text messaging. Many people around campus seem to be able to pass their free moments (and occupied ones besides) in text conversations, even in situations when looking at the scenery might have easily passed the lonesome thirty seconds before the next exciting thing happened.

I notice things like this mostly because I am not the type of person who turns to long-distance communication solely for entertainment. As a slight introvert, I feel much more comfortable talking to people if I have something to say to them. I find it difficult to imagine the effort it would take to have something worthwhile to say whenever I get bored.

This is why I was interested to read the bit in the assigned reading entitled "Antisocial Networking?" about how computer-mediated communication can help shy people make friends. I have a Facebook account, but I don't feel any more inclined to communicate with people through the site than in real life because it doesn't change the fact that I don't have anything to say.

I looked into some papers on introverted people and Facebook, and found that the literature consistently disagrees with me. For instance, a survey conducted by Baker and Oswald revealed that "among relatively shy individuals, Facebook use was positively associated with satisfaction, importance, and closeness with Facebook friends, but not with non-Facebook friends" (883). A very similar study by Orr et al. concluded likewise that "shyness was significantly positively correlated with attitudes toward Facebook" (339).

Oh.

More than proving me wrong, though, I think this indicates how complex and open-ended this field of study is. The fact that much of it deals with human behavior and psychology means that many variations in motive will be unaccounted for in systematic studies. Maybe there was a troublemaker like me in Baker and Oswald's study who was skewing the data, and who consequently had to be discarded as an outlier.

It seems like any quantitative data must ignore many unique and valuable perspectives, whether they follow the statistical correlation or not. While this type of research is undeniably valuable, I think that for this topic, free-response surveys will also be good resources. Individuals' opinions, regardless of whether they are broad enough to be representative of a statistically significant percentage of the population, will also provide insights into how people (who are individuals, after all) use and react to constant connectivity.