78 || the dynamics of life | CONTROVERSIAL ISSUES by Melissa Goldstein
ARE WE
ADDICTED?
We enter social media from a computer, tablet, or smartphone. Day and night. At home and at work. In a traffic jam or in the subway, in line to buy groceries or mail a package, at the hairdresser’ s or in the barber’ s chair. In essence, over just a few years a revolution in human interactions has taken place: today most of us get acquainted, conduct business, and meet and socialize with people on virtual platforms more frequently than in real life. Let’ s take a look at what our new virtual life has brought us.
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The sphere of emotion
With the appearance of social media on the Internet, we all have acquired the ability to express our thoughts and feelings publicly, to write something on our own pages or to comment on someone else’ s. It has become possible to replenish an exhausted emotional resource when we feel sad or lonely, or to give voice to a moment of anger without the risk of a punch in the mug. And we can always find someone to give us a pat on the back or help us hone our debating skills.
Interest groups Virtual life, with its animated discussions, shocking scandals, and frank confessions, can be gripping. A new type of star has emerged— the blogger capable of generating interesting content. As time goes by, interest groups and interaction formats take shape to satisfy any taste: YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter … You can read blogs, and write for others to read; you can take and post pictures of things that interest you, and find others interested in the same things; you can make a video showing people how to make sauerkraut or drive a stick-shift. In the meantime, new technologies are popping up like mushrooms, and mobile gadgets have made it possible to interact online for days at a time. Folks at every level have become engaged, and the snobbish“ I don’ t do social media” has been replaced by awkwardness if you don’ t.
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