Why I Am Slightly Uneasy About Social Media
Although I don’t particularly like the term, I can be characterised as a millennial. As a millennial, I am a part of a generation of individuals who have intrinsically grown up with and around digital technology. The normative usage of personal computers, mobile phones and video game systems are implicit cultural and generational expectations. Particularly of note, however, is the cultural phenomenon that is the Internet. It has been interesting to me to see it develop concurrently as I have developed, from being an obscure blue button that I was never allowed to click on, to a resource that I was sometimes allowed to use for homework, (at the expense of preventing everyone else from making phone calls in the house) to having perpetual, instantaneous, high-speed access even when I’m not at home. Like most human endeavours, the benefits of the cyber revolution also carry particular pitfalls. Social media platforms, like Facebook, are built on the human desire for “the other”. They are designed to connect you to people in a communal capacity ignoring the usual barriers like location, time and even language. Want to keep an aunty in San Francisco involved in your life? Want to share your…...
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