Do you think this generation is facing a huge identity and communication problems even though social media made it easier to reach people?

[nightdrot]

The follow-up to the question sort of misses the point. The whole idea behind social media was that, in allowing for the broadest possible freedom of expression there would be a more authentic debate. This in turn leading to greater harmony over time.

In fact, there is a paradox. By making communication easier, social media made understanding far more difficult by allowing everyone to live in their own mental universe. Each side talked to itself and felt free to yell at the other side. Greater authenticity, unbounded by the conventions of etiquette and good manners, turn conversation into confrontation.

The use of anonymous names certainly helped facilitate this - individuals will feel free to speak more bluntly and without being bound by social conventions. However, it is a secondary factor. A symptom of the mistaken underlying premise of social media. Anonymous people who stopped to hear the other side and were open to debate as opposed to the confirmation of their biases, would not likely foster greater communications problems.

The problem then being, at its' root, that once the beast beneath the veneer of civilization was unleashed, communication and dialogue became problematic. In short, in a fascinating way, social media undermine the very assumptions of the Lockean Enlightenment. Namely that man stripped of the irrational limitations of social conventions, identity and the like was a social being instinctively rational and given to spontaneous harmony with his fellows.

In fact, it turns out that spontaneous man, freed from all the restraints of class, religion and so forth, is mere beast. Not given to listening to his fellows but quick to re-tribalize. To seek out those whom he is in agreement with and to despise those with whom he disagrees.

Thus, the train wreck that is Twitter, Facebook and the like. Superficially examples of technological brilliance and scientific innovation. In truth, the key that unlocked the savagery. The tool by which the fiction of the "brotherhood of all men" was laid bare.

[WindAtMyBack]

Yes. It's not so much that it makes it easy to communicate, it replaces it. It replaces real life communication and interactions.

Email made it easy to stay in touch with people you'd lost contact with. Social media and texting are more about chit chat which is something very different. People are by themselves talking to a screen. It could be an AI they are talking to and it wouldn't be much different.

[linds34]

I think you're getting somewhere. I see a lot of people my age whose entire self-esteem is based on Instagram likes. What happens when they age and don't have any real humans who like them other than for their looks?

[OddBeMe]

No more than any other you generation throughout the ages. What did they say about the counterculture?

[Gwenhwyfar]

B sounds good 😊. Though I’m not awkward irl.

[Anonymous]

Go to sleep