
“I love humanity, but to my great surprise, the more I love humanity in general, the less I love people as particular individuals.” – Henry Miller
SOCIAL media: the means of conversation of the modern man; where information can be processed to suit our limited attention span; the place to be wherever you are.
Bite-sized and click-baited, information can become an infestation. And although we are aware of this consequence, we continue to feed ourselves such a mental diet.
Problems did arise. And like the townspeople of Hamelin, we hired the Pied Piper to solve our problems.
On the other hand, due to the accessibility of unlimited sources of materials, social media can also be a great aid to self-learning. We get answers to any question. We have the whole wide world at the tip of our fingers.
And so, the debate — and the dilemma — continues: Should social media platforms be endorsed by teachers and included in the curriculum?
Yes. There is no point demonizing and banning the use of Facebook, Instagram, ChatGPT and other related apps. There is no turning back. And we can’t be hypocrites about it. The tricky part is how to use it properly. How much copy-pasting is too much? When is self-expression more egotistic than artistic?
No. Learning must be more “humanistic.” Education is about quality not quantity. In another sense, the process of learning a subject is as important as the learning itself. The end goal here is to teach students how to manage contradictions and extremes guided by universal values and virtues. But who cares about principles when might has been always right?
The world is shrinking, they say. The 24/7 information superhighway has not only made life faster, but it also made us closer to one another. Privacy could only mean not having a Wi-Fi connection. To backread is anathema to proper scrolling.
But our world didn’t shrink. We have made trivial what were once sacred. We have considered important what were once nonsensical. People get cancelled.
It is man who is shrinking.
“On the deck of a motorboat, a man is sunning himself. Suddenly, he’s splashed by a curtain of spray, sprinkled with droplets that leave his skin with a pleasant tingling feeling. He towels himself off without giving it much thought. He soon notices that he is a couple of inches shorter. His doctor conducts a thorough examination, finds nothing out of the ordinary, and admits that he has no explanation. The man goes on getting smaller every day.
The people around him seem to grow; his wife, who used to come up to just above his shoulder, is now a head taller than he is. She soon leaves this runty little husband. He takes up with a dwarf in the circus, with whom he shares his last human passion before she, too, transforms into a giantess. He keeps on shrinking and reaches the size of a doll, then a tin soldier, until he finds himself confronted by his own cat — an adorable kitty who has become a tiger with immense eyes and who stretches her paw at him, sharp-edged talons extended. Later, having taken refuge in the cellar, he faces a monstrous spider… — from Richard Matheson’s science fiction novel The Shrinking Man.
Social media have multiplied our concerns and anxieties. What seems to be at first a small problem becomes bigger once posted. But being active on social media promised us one thing: attention — that pleasant tingling feeling we get from clicks and views. And we are willing to trade our peace of mind — hell, our whole sanity — for some emojis. Is there anything wrong with it? Of course, there is. For we love the emojis not primarily because we can see it, but more importantly because others can see it — especially by those who did not react! Those imbeciles!
Our happiness — and contentment — is now quantified by algorithmic results. And what is wrong with this? Everything. There is a difference between authentic expression of interaction and pretentious approval of opinion. But we have no choice. We have to post. For only in posting can we stop shrinking. How ecstatic we become if the share button has been clicked once more.
How dangerous is this addiction for attention? We will see the results (more bad than good) from our children’s emotional development, from our students’ lack of dedicated effort, and from our own personal observation./PN