Can You Hear Me Now?

When walking down the street, you notice a woman pacing in circles while jabbing her phone in the air in a frustrated manner trying to get a signal. Then you sit down in at your favorite coffee shop, and the man at the adjacent table is yelling, “Can you hear me now?!” At this point you wonder: why does a dropped call or lack of phone service disorient us so much? Well the simple answer is: we are constantly connected and are dependent on our phones to survive.

I am one of those people who gets easily frustrated when my phone isn’t working correctly and I feel the pressing need to contact someone. Maybe we feel like a more important person when we get a lot of phone calls; we feel as if we are needed. Don’t you notice how famous and important people don’t get excited at the prospect of a phone call from someone, especially a fan? I definitely don’t receive very many calls or text messages in a day, and when my phone begins to vibrate, I am on top of it. When someone wants to talk to you or might have a question that you can answer, it feels nice. This creates a dependence on phones, and when they don’t work for us, we feel distraught.

This feeling of loss when technology doesn’t work is common in other areas of our lives too. If the Internet doesn’t work for example, I become very uncomfortable without the ability to check my e-mails. The same may go for Facebook, MySpace, or any other online communication device. This discomfort and feeling of loss indicates a dependence on constant connectivity to technology. So if we are wondering whether constant connectivity is a bane or boon, it might help to decide whether being disconnected is a bane or boon. At this stage in society, wouldn’t disconnection to technology disrupt our lives and livelihoods far more than the banes of constant connectivity?

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Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

"Unlike a mirror, which reminds us of who we really are and may have a negative effect on self-esteem if that image does match with our ideal, Facebook can show a positive version of ourselves,” said associate professor Jeffrey Hancock. “We’re not saying that it’s a deceptive version of self, but it’s a positive one” (CNN Tech).

There has been a growing concern that our generation’s dependence on Facebook and other similar social media networks to determine our self-worth has reached unacceptable levels. How can we define ourselves as unique, interesting, artistic, clever, cool, etc. while differentiating ourselves from everyone else who might hope to get the same image across?

Facebook is formatted such that you can learn almost everything and anything you want about your connections. Naturally, the idea of such openness is intimidating to many, and privacy groups, like the Electronic Privacy Information Center, have come together and garnered some influence within the government (All Things Digital). What these groups might want to consider, however, is that companies like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are ultimately around to maximize their net income despite the efforts these organizations go through to convince you otherwise.

Ultimately, Facebook is not an inherent right but a privilege.

I admit that all of this sounds ominous, but we must not forget that there’s a bright side to it all. With a few exceptions, you, and no one else, have almost complete control, as a Facebook user, to control the content of your profile. It is up to you to determine which celebrity/athlete/artist pages to like, whether or not you want to share your education and employment specifics, whether or not you will keep other peoples’ posts on your wall and comments on your pictures, and even whether or not others will be able to access your pictures from your page. Finally, it is up to you to decide what picture will summarize your online presence. I’m referring, of course, to your profile picture, often the first thing you notice when you click through to your friends’ pages.

I took the above quote from Jeffrey Hancock from an article on CNN Tech. The story covers Hancock’s report regarding the correlation between Facebook and self-esteem in a study of 63 students (click here to be linked to the report itself). It turns out that subjects who spent time on Facebook returned more positive feedback about themselves than those who were either staring at a mirror or a blank computer screen during the allotted time (CNN Tech).

“For many people, there’s an automatic assumption that the internet is bad,” Hancock said. “This is one of the first studies to show that there’s a psychological benefit of Facebook” (CNN Tech).

Does the research speak for itself?

Either way, perhaps some of us should consider lightening up.