Back in 2001 I wrote a guest article for a nationally syndicated column on the future of the virtual world of the internet. I talked about how in the future everything we could imagine would be mere keystrokes and mouse-clicks away. Goods and services. Entertainment. Music. Food and drink. "Connections" with others. All without leaving the confines of our home. And a decade later I see that what I had envisioned has pretty much come to reality. Today, thanks to the advances of the virtual world of the web, it is totally possible for someone to be ‘connected’ with the outside world and to physically sustain themselves without ever having to venture into the ‘outside world’.Around the same time I wrote that article, social networking websites began to hit the scene with sites like Xanga, Migente, Yahoo 360 and Black Planet. Then with sites like Friendster and MySpace launching in the early 2000s, journalists began asking the question “Aren’t sites like these killing ‘real’ human interaction?” Arguments against these journalist were raised saying, “How is talking to someone via a given ‘technology’ (hand-written letters, telegraph, phone, email, IM, social network) any less ‘real’?
The problem with those arguments back then and still today, in my opinion, is that we are talking about channels of communication and not talking about true interaction. Interaction is more than just communicating back and forth through a channel or conduit. It is true interaction on all levels…intellectual, spiritual, emotional and physical – either by actual physical contact or by visual contact.
It's definitely different to communicate in person. There are the nuances of recognition of facial cues vs. using the telephone vs. reading text. Sitting in a resteurant or local watering hole, or on a beach at night near a bonfire, talking with others face-to-face is a different experience than sitting at my laptop reading. Granted, we still make ‘connections’ through social networking, but they are of a different nature.
Social networking plain and simple is another channel. Public posting on a social media site is just like making public comments as a DJ, personality or a writer on radio or TV or the newspaper. Comments on what is posted is like the studio line at the radio station, calls and letters to the TV station or the editor of the newspaper. However, with social networking there is more intimacy through chat and private messaging…similar to the telephone. But no matter how you explain it, it is communication through a channel. Not actual human interaction.
As someone who has been in the media business for nearly 30 years, I look at social media as both a channel and a tool to add to my channels of communicating with others…not as a replacement for a channel or tool I already have…or a replacement for personal interaction with others. Sadly though, it seems more people are using social media to replace channels. And it’s even sadder to see that some have used social media to completely replace real one-on-one human interaction.
I’m reminded of a commercial that I saw recently on TV. It shows a young teenage girl on her laptop, alone at home saying "My parents have no friends…I have 895 of them." Then the scene cuts to the girl’s parents, out having fun and interacting in the real world rock climbing, sailing and interacting with other people.
Now before you hit the “comment” button on this post, let me say that I am not bashing social networking at all by the above article. Social media is a new and exciting tool to communicate with others. All I am doing is reminding us to keep it in perspective. To add it to the toolbox of communication tools and networking availabilities. Not to use it as a replacement for the real world.
Because when it comes down to it, our lives ARE the REAL world.
2 pings
Why Social Media is Not Destroying Human Interaction - Opinion Social Media - facebook human interaction media myspace opinion social social media twitter - Travis Weston
September 22, 2011 at 11:03 AM (UTC -4)
[...] interaction? It’s bolstered it. I think Mike Holder says it properly on an article entitled “Virtual” Social Networking vs. “Real” Human Interaction, when he says “…I look at social media as both a channel and a tool to add to my [...]
Why Social Media is Not Destroying Human Interaction | Travis Weston
December 27, 2011 at 12:22 PM (UTC -4)
[...] interaction? It’s bolstered it. I think Mike Holder says it properly on an article entitled “Virtual” Social Networking vs. “Real” Human Interaction, when he says “…I look at social media as both a channel and a tool to add to my [...]