People Are Becoming Shallower Because Of Modern Social Media

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People are becoming shallower because of modern social media
Habitual use of the Internet might bring about serious side effects. In particular, using social media like tweets and texts on a regular basis serves to encourage shallow thinking, which reduces people’s capacity to engage in introspection or contemplation, whether offline or online (Annisette and Lafreniere 156). This paper argues that people these days have become shallower owing to the use of modern social media networking sites.
Over the last 10 to 15 years, most people have been increasing the amount of time that they spend exchanging electronic messages, surfing the Internet, and hanging out in various social media sites such as MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook. The Internet has become a central source of information as well as insight in how users in inner-city, suburban and even rural communities make life decisions (Brookfield 48). At the same time, parents have been gifting their children with smart phones, Play Stations, iPods, and laptops. But even as people over the years have been enjoying the apparently never-ending bounties of the Internet, psychologists and neurobiologists particularly in the United States and Canada have been conducting research studies which demonstrate that how people collect information online generally impedes learning, weakens understanding, and hinders comprehension. Worse still, the adverse effects of using the web frequently continue to afflict an individual even after he or she turn their computers off.
In less than the duration of a single childhood, people in the United States have merged with their machines. They stare at screens for no less than 8 hours every day, which is actually a lot more time than the amount of time they spend on any other activity including sleeping (Dokoupil). Teenagers spend about 7 hours staring at a screen in the average school day; the duration reaches eleven hours if the time they spend to multitask on different devices is also counted (Dokoupil). Also, texting these days has become like blinking the eyes and the average individual in America receives or sends an estimated 400 text messages on a monthly basis, which is actually 4 times the number in 2007, and the average teenager in the country processes about 3,700 text messages every month (Dokoupil).
It is worth mentioning that the huge number of messages plus other bits of information found on the Web, from Facebook updates to tweets to emails, interrupt people’s thoughts in a manner that hinders memory formation and the building of knowledge. In essence, the more information a person juggles, the less able he or she is to make sense of it all. Excessive use of social media also makes people to forget significant things that they knew (Dokoupil). People who use social media heavily find it hard to concentrate even when they are not online. For instance, these people are significantly less capable of distinguishing vital information from unimportant information than individuals who actually use social medial less frequently (Annisette and Lafreniere 156). Also, spending much time with smart phones and computers weakens the capacity of people to think creatively, critically and deeply. As people rush around the web and social media to gather little pieces of information, in so doing they train their brains to be fast but superficial.
The assertion that people nowadays are becoming shallower as a result of the use of social media is supported by the Shallowing Hypothesis. According to the Shallowing Hypothesis as conceptualized by Nicholas Carr, recent media technologies have resulted in a notable decline in ordinary daily reflective thought. There is a growing drop in daily reflective thought, thinking over and making judgments as regards what has occurred, due to a constantly connected online culture in which ideas are exchanged in short texts or tweets (Carr). Put simply, using social media networks frequently would be linked to a fall in the utilization of reflective thought, a reduction in importance placed on life goals concerning aesthetics and morality, and an increase in importance placed on life goals concerning image and hedonism (Carr). The Net encourages the speedy and distracted sampling of little bits of information from a variety of different sources. The ethic of the Net is that of the industrialist, meaning an ethic of efficiency and speed, of optimized consumption and production. People are becoming increasingly proficient at skimming and scanning, but they are also losing their ability to concentrate, contemplate and reflect (Carr). In this way, people are becoming shallower by reason of using modern social media networking sites.
In essence, always-on portable entertainment media, always-connected internet access, and always-in-touch electronic social media have resulted in a considerable fall in ordinary every day reflective thought. The notion is that as people become increasingly used to brief and quick communication, they also get used to similarly quick and brief thinking. This would cause reflective thought to decline, which contributes to a drop in significance placed on morality as well as an increase in significance placed on image and hedonism. Consequently, people become shallower.
As per the Shallowing Hypothesis, some specific kinds of social media such Facebook and texting promote quick, shallow thought which could bring about moral and cognitive shallowness if a person uses them very often (Carr). Social medial sites make the users who use them regularly less moral and shallower. Given that Instagram, Twitter and Facebook usually result in short and quick responses, it is in fact killing the art of reflective thought (Annisette and Lafreniere 158). This is in accordance with the Shallowing Theory, and the most frequent users of social media sites end up more self-obsessed and less concerned about other people. This implies that their aims in life are more about becoming good looking, famed, and wealthy, just like Kim Kardashian the social media queen, and less about worthy goals such as betterment of society (Carr).
Annisette and Lafreniere (156) in their research sought to test the main claims that the Shallowing Hypothesis makes, whilst at the same time advancing their general knowledge as regards the consequences of the usage of social media. These researchers examined the correlations between social media use, texting frequency, reflectiveness, the Big Five personality traits, as wel...