A friend recently sent me a link to Tom Wright’s response to blogging and social media, wherein Wright called the two movements “cultural masturbation.” In it, he warned against the social isolationism of social media and blogging.
Blogging? Seriously? How is blogging any more socially isolating than just plain old writing? Writing a book, writing in your journal, writing a short story, writing a poem. Yes, these are all socially isolating in and of themselves, but what makes blogging soooo much different from every other form of writing?
(Hint: it doesn’t. It’s only believed to be a problem by people who don’t fully understand that blogging is just one more form of publishing.)
NT Wright on Blogging/Social Media from Bill Kinnon on Vimeo.
Bah!
It’s easy to say something creates isolationism. Tom Wright says it about blogging and social media, that it will somehow keep people from interacting with other people. He worries that if we spend too much time in front of a computer screen, we will lose regular face-to-face contact with real people. We will substitute computer time for real time, and completely ruin society.
Double Bah!
This is nothing new. Experts have been wringing their hands about something making us lose touch with our humanity for years.
- “Experts” said it about email and the Internet in the mid-90s.
- “Experts” said it about television in the 40s and 50s.
- “Experts” said it about movies in the 20s and 30s.
- “Experts” said it about radio in the 20s.
- “Experts” said it about the telephone at the turn of the century.
- “Experts” said it about the automobile at the turn of the century.
I think the only thing who are isolated from society are the experts.
Tom Wright admits he doesn’t use social media, doesn’t know how to use it, and this somehow qualifies him to speak about the social and relational ramifications of social media? (He does admit to being an avid texter and emailer though; so is he socially isolated?)
For one thing, if he used social media to any degree, he would also know that many social media users — at least in the business setting — turn their online contacts into real-world contacts. I have personally drunk gallons of coffee with people I’ve met online. I’ve had conversations with them, done business with them, become friends with them. All people I never would have met if it hadn’t been for social media.
And I’m not the only one. My entire industry is rife with people who use social media to enhance and even create their careers.
Social Media is Not the Bad Guy, Human Behavior Is
Anything can be a detriment to human relationships: food, sex, exercise, fashion, sports, shopping, work, play, sleep, collecting, hobbies, cooking. You name it, and I can find someone obsessed with it, and then say that __________ is a detriment to human relationships, because someone took it too far.
There are always people who will take something too far. But to look at the outlier, that one in a million person, and extrapolate a calamitous end for anyone and everyone who uses it is just being a sensationalist.
Wright assumes that the people who spend all this time in front of a computer screen don’t work or go to school, and are already teetering on the brink of being a hermit, when they were tipped over the edge into complete solitude by the siren call of the online relationship.
If you’re doing social media right, you’re using it to create relationships that expand and extend into the real world. If you’re not doing it right, well, you probably spend too much time indoors with your eight cats already.
