How social media takes away our humanness
hi
i’m armin and wait hold hold on one
second
all right where was i okay so obviously
that was scripted and i meant it in a
lighthearted way
because it can be amusing when we
recognize our own faults
what is not so funny is when our faults
limit our real-life interactions
we have all been the person to whip out
our phone at the wrong time but rarely
are we called out for it
why is that we are the creators of
social media
we have accustomed to this irrational
idea that replacing real conversations
with online communication is okay i’m
here to prove to you
that it is not social media has begun to
encroach upon our humanity
to the point that it even takes away our
humanness
now you may be wondering what this
really means the dictionary says that it
involves the nature of people
technology and more specifically social
media are quite evidently
not in our nature not only does it
change what we do
but it changes who we are the instant
you were born were you inclined to send
a snap to your friend
or to cry looking into your mom’s eyes
the name social media also misses with
our minds a little
and making us think that what we’re
doing is social in reality
it is the polar opposite in order to
identify how social media brought us
here
we need to examine our past so let me
give you a brief overview of how social
media came to be
the first recognizable source of social
media was six degrees
founded by andrew weinrecht in 1997
aiming to help friends communicate in a
more convenient way
online the first renowned source of
social media
facebook was launched seven years later
by mark zuckerberg
it helps close friends keep in touch and
distant friends stay in touch
but by communicating online it becomes
unnatural
this attitude we have is commonly
misconceived as okay
as humanlike and natural the intentions
have been lost
we are letting social media take us to
places we never wanted to go
and we are stuck trapped in a maze
full of crossed wires and do not know
which way to turn
which path should we take
now it is easy to get lost in thinking
about these thick
questions as they are deep and
unanswerable
on the contrary i feel that smaller and
easier questions can help us see the
issue from above
i asked many of you the spring va survey
a couple of
thin and answerable questions to help us
see from a broader scope
out of the 145 respondents approximately
90 percent of people
said that they used their phones for two
hours or more on each weekday
and another 40 percent used them for
four hours plus
on the weekends over 60 percent use them
for 5 hours or more each day
adding up to 10 hours in total now when
we find ourselves mindlessly wasting our
time on these machines
how is it fair to tell our parents we
can’t come to the table for a family
dinner
as my charts indicate health and
humanness are directly related
according to the majority of you guys
social media takes up too much of your
time
due to the ongoing pressure here in the
technology capital of the world
many of us are sleep deprived social
media
almost always has a negative impact on
the amount of sleep we get each night
and less than 15 percent said that it
never affected their sleep time
this data also shows that students feel
that their grades would be better
without social media
although we can all agree it has a
number of social benefits only some of
your real self is shown online
you can pick out your identity and
change who you are
online interactions have become junk
food for our brains
and have us hooked how much more direct
could i get in that
i just supplied you with relevant and
relatable statistics
that you could be a part of that you are
a part of most of you feel that it takes
away from your sleep
that it is dehumanizing cal newport a
professor at georgetown university
states that there is a growing amount of
research telling us that if you
spend your day in a state of fragmented
detention to take quick
glances or just check your phone it can
permanently reduce your capacity for
concentration
quite ironically this act of trying to
be a well-rounded human
but taking care of your social profile
is actually dehumanizing
all the attempts to stay in touch
distance you from being social
keeping in touch with our friends is
good if used in a healthy way
communicating in real life is much more
valuable than doing so online
next time you open your phone to message
a nearby friend about how their day was
or send a picture of your face with no
context i urge you to set up a time to
meet and hang out
this shouldn’t take more than 10 or so
seconds and is a great first step
in retaining your humanness
if this is too hard for you at the
moment and you need time to adjust to
this
virtue of spending less time online try
sending yourself a screen time
if your parents haven’t already if they
have maybe ask them to lower it a bit
to challenge yourself and strive for a
better you
social media or social life
ted talks or tick tocks you need to make
a choice
you