To begin, I know this is ironic that I’m using social media to stress my concern, however at this point it has become the most effective way to communicate my thoughts to the most amount of people.
Social media. Facebook. MySpace. Twitter. Everyone knows what I am talking about, not simply by word of mouth, but by a social media revolution. Everyone has a Facebook account, people are quickly catching onto the Twitter phenomenon, my question is, what exactly is this social media doing to us? Is it completely changing the way we communicate without us even knowing? Is it strong enough to create a permanent impact on our society?
Now, I am only twenty-one years old, old enough to admit my lack of knowledge about society, but young enough to think I can still figure out all the answers. What I want to figure out is if our society is changing, if the way we communicate is permanently altered due to social media.
The famous sociologist Emile Durkheim talked about how society would ultimately fail due to his notion of anomie and a general lack of solidarity. Basically, we’re losing everything that kept us together as a functioning society; to Durkheim that meant that institutions such as religion and education, the glue that held us together, are no longer valued parts of our society, and all together our values are diminishing. The more we communicate through technology, the less solidarity we have.
We now have a technological society. With that, we have a lack of traditional, normal communication. For example, lets talk about a normal day at Penn State. You walk to class like everyone else, but do you stop to smile, wave or greet anyone, or are you staring at your Smartphone or listening to your IPOD to avoid communication? When you sit in class it’s not like High School where everyone is talking until the second that class starts, now it’s much more common that everyone is sitting in silence, most likely on their Smartphones tending to their online relationships, rather than dare to obtain an actual relationship with someone.
Times are most definitely changing, but what I struggle to figure out is, is it good, or bad?
To learn more about Emile Durkheim and his impact on the social world, click here:
http://www.sociology.org/content/vol005.003/dubeski.html
