The Counter-Productivity of Social Media

I recently read an interesting article on CNN.com, so I thought I would use one of my available free posts to analyze this article. The article, titled “Exploring the Anti-social Side of Social Media”, is essentially about a woman who tries to make people realize that the social media that is supposedly bring people together is actually driving them apart. Going about it in a bit of a peculiar way, Cristin Norine decided to live in glass quarters located on a street corner for 30 days. Except for the bathroom, every room could be seen into by people passing by outside and the only way Norine could communicate with the outside world was thorugh the internet. According to Cristin Norine, the goal of this exhibitionism was to show people how although the internet can be used to connect people from different parts of the world, it is ultimately putting glass walls between us and the people around us.

Reading this article, I find myself having mixed feelings. On the one hand, I agree with Norine’s assessment about social media, but on the other hand I feel as though Norine really did not go about spreading this knowledge in an appropriate way. I have always found it ironic how social media like facebook and twitter are actually creating more and more distance between people rather than bringing them together. Sure, they may allow two people from countries apart to chat with each other, but they are destroying people’s ability to talk to someone who is right in front of them. Instead of meeting someone and having to experience the mystery of finding out information about them through personal contact and experience, things like facebook are essentially turning people into introvert stalkers who just lurk around facebook whenever they want to find out information about someone. In this aspect, I agree with Norine and am glad that not everyone has completely fallen under social media’s spell.

Although I agree with Norine’s perspectives, I really think her exhibitionism just got her attention rather than spreading a message. Many people walking by on the street probably did not even understand why she was doing this. To those people it was basically just a circus act to amuse them for a couple minutes on their way to and from work. Also, even for the people who did understand her reasons for this, I highly doubt that it actually caused any of them to think about how much they use social media and the consequences it is having on their lives. I am sure that doing this got Norine a lot of attention and media recognition, but I doubt it actually helped get her message across. Her intentions were wonderful, but the execution was less than proper.

The article can be read at this link: http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/social.media/11/19/social.media.isolation.project/index.html