Dear Dr K,
Today we are all individually connected to the world in a way that was probably not even conceivable a couple of decades ago, thanks to social media. Does this increased level of engagement with the world mean that we are better equipped to take collective action to solve the world’s problems? Does it enable our generation to think about more holistic, global ways to effect change than previous ones?
Anne Onimus
Dear Anne,
Why are you asking me? Are you feeling better equipped to take collective action? Are you thinking about more holistic, global solutions?
True, we are more connected to the world today than we were before but how does that help? Surely you know that Facebook posts claiming to donate $1 to hungry children in Africa for every ‘like’ are a sham, but you may still believe that signing an online petition to help reduce the price of bananas in Cuba will make some kind of a difference.
Even if you are sceptical about online petitions, you may still sign a few if they are for causes you believe in (or have no objection to) anyway, and on the off-chance that the petition can create some change why not help out by adding your name to it? After all, it doesn’t cost you anything and it doesn’t require significant time or effort. Maybe that itself should be enough to make you suspicious.
How do you expect to make a difference to anything without spending any money, time or effort?
Previous generations probably did not find it very difficult to ignore the problems of people living far away, or those issues that were neither covered in the mainstream media nor encountered in daily life. Social media has, to a large extent, made it possible for us to ignore absolutely everything. Since your search results, the news, and most other content you see on the Internet are tailored specifically to your tastes, based on your online history, it is possible for you to be exposed to only those things you would like to have exposure to. It is possible for you to be insulated from the world while believing that you are more engaged with it than you ever were before.
It remains difficult to completely cut ourselves off from the real world, but even here we have attempted to tailor the reality we see to the reality that we would like to see.
The human field of vision is limited by nature; we do not have X-ray vision; so when we surround ourselves with things that are pleasant to our senses we also block out the more unpleasant realities of the world.
I guess what I am trying to say is, the Internet is a fine place to learn about the world and social media is a great way to share information, but sometimes you need to think about changing the price of bananas at home before doing it in Cuba.
Yours questionably,
Dr K