I feel like I've already read these articles a hundred times before. I'm honestly getting a little sick of hearing about how my generation is doomed to hide behind the screens of our phones and measure our self-worth in terms of "likes" and followers. It seems like it's become popular to hate Facebook and dub social media the mainstream monster. Not only is it an unoriginal argument, but it's an offensive one. It assumes we're all helplessly unaware of the effects technology is having on our lives, and that we're all content with trading real-life connections with cyber ones. The reality is very different. I think my generation is reevaluating more than ever the role that technology should play in our lives. We're making a big effort to supplement our posting and tweeting with face-to-face hangouts with our friends. Many popular bars have enacted "no-phone" policies, and when I go out to dinner with a group we often stack our phones in the center of the table to eliminate distractions.
"With technology creating this wall around our lives, it allows one to hide behind a tweet, email or text."
This line bothers me. We don't want to hide, we want our voices to be heard. And social media can make our voices louder than ever before. One of the articles says that my generation needs to "practice what it posts," citing the novel-esque Facebook tirades people post to their pages instead of acting on their beliefs in the real world. The author implies we're too lazy or too scared to voice our opinions off of the screen, preferring instead the removed security of social media. But traditional activism and online activism aren't mutually exclusive. We're using Facebook and Twitter to boost support for campaigns we're already carrying out in real life. It's not a trade-off. Today I walked through the quad and saw around 30 students holding signs and loudly voicing their stances on the abortion debate. Onlookers paused to watch the action and discuss their own views. It's true-- Social media will never replace the power of holding a sign and shouting out how you feel in public. But we aren't trying to replace it. We use it as a tool to better inform our arguments and help us accomplish our goals. So, Elite Daily, we're practicing and we're posting.
And then there's the whole issue of "authenticity." I keep hearing people say that social media has made my generation lose it's authenticity. One of the Elite Daily authors even goes so far as to say we're losing our sense of who we really are because we're so preoccupied with how we project ourselves online. So, the fact that what we post can be viewed by all our followers makes it inherently unauthentic? They're still our words, our photos, our lives. And what I choose to post is an authentic decision based on what thoughts and events are most important to me and worthy of being shared. Some people try to argue that because we only post the good things that happen to us on Facebook, or the prettiest pictures of us on Instagram, we lose our authenticity. I agree that real life is much messier and uglier than our Facebook profiles, but social media isn't the culprit. What about when we perfectly craft our resumes to make us seem more appealing to employers, or when we're on our best behavior at dinner to impress our significant other's parents? We've been in an internal struggle between how we perceive ourselves and how we want others to perceive us long before social media came into the picture.
We really need to move away from thinking my generation is a bunch of narcissistic, selfie-taking Instagram whores. My generation is passionate, innovative and curious. We care about politics, about revolutions happening across the world, and about the direction our lives are headed. And we're exposed to an infinitely larger pool of information and opportunities for engagement than our parents were. The problem with making social media the evil is that it pushes us away from the tools that can help us create a better future. We need to stop letting "selfies" define our relationship with technology. We need to adjust our view that social media diminishes authenticity and start thinking of it as a valuable extension of ourselves and our ideas. If you share these authors' annoyance with your Facebook friends who post bouts of TMI about their recent breakups, pick up your finger and unfriend them. Stop letting a minority that we don't like act as the poster child for our generation.
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