The Long-Term Effects of Social Networking's Ubiquity

I like talking to people I disagree with.

Really, I do.

If you pay attention to my Shameless Self-Promotion series, you know that I do some writing as a critic, and I think part of my attraction to dissenting opinion is rooted in that critical mindset. If I can find another person who can give me a reasoned argument to a side of an argument I happen to disagree with, I find that not only impressive but respectable. Even though I have an opposing mindset to this person, the spirit behind our mindsets is the same. We've both come to our ideas from a place of intense thought, one that's carefully weighed the arguments for both sides.




This has also resulted in one of my more glaring character flaws: I love to argue. Since I like finding out about people's opinions, especially if they run in contrast to my own, I like to grill people on those opinions. This is to try and find out if their reasoning and logic is coming from a place of-- um-- logic, rather than a regurgitated opinion that they just have and haven't given it a second thought.

Now, most people don't like to argue. That's fine. Once I figure this out-- and if it takes me awhile to do so, I apologize in advance-- I tend to avoid starting a debate with those people. I can understand this. For some people an argument seems like an attack on their personal beliefs, even if I usually only mean them to compare and contrast my ideas with this other person's.

Still, this cultural adversity to debate worries me.



I grew up with a computer, but it feels as though I had one at a younger age than many other people my age. I had a 14.4kbps modem in elementary school, so I was also introduced to the Internet pretty young, too. Now, of course, I use the Internet every day. I use it as an avenue for getting and working jobs. I use it for recreation. I use it-- duh-- for this blog.

It was when I was thirteen that I began to understand social possibilities of the Internet. I met people through avenues for creative writing, I met people on message boards for bands. I met people randomly on ICQ.

I was a huge nerd, it's true. And, living in a homogenized small town, I didn't get along particularly well with many people. The fact that I was pretty intelligent for my age set me immediately apart and made keeping friends difficult for little-kid me, someone who wasn't particularly socially astute. So, when I was fourteen and fifteen, and decided that I had enough of being the butt of the jokes of the few friends I had, I kind of withdraw my social circle from the world around me and put it out exclusively online.

In this world, I could be exactly who I was at that moment, and it helped me better understand how to deal with people who would give me shit. By being able to view other social relationships I was able to better come to understand how to have ones of my own. But by being able to have a world where I was unfettered by geographical or social restrictions, I didn't have to change.



Change is a necessary part of any adolescent life. We can't be the same person at eighteen that we were at twelve. And the most effective way to change is to be forced into encounters that make you uncomfortable, where your viewpoints are challenged, and where the things you thought you knew for certain become more gray, and maybe you have to adjust your perspective entirely. In other words, the most effective path for change is to encounter people with whom you disagree.

But for those two years, from fourteen to sixteen, I didn't want to change. And, thanks to the Internet, I didn't have to. I never had to seriously consider any opinion I disagreed with. And that was for when my Internet connection was dictated by whether or not someone needed the phone, and when a person had to actively search out people rather than being able to use their e-mail address book to find everyone they ever communicated with on a social networking site. This was before social networking made sense as a phrase.

Take a moment to consider pre-schoolers now. They may not be typing away at laptops in coffee shops, but they have toy computers to acclimate themselves to QWERTY keyboards, they have netbooks that are practically made for their hands that pretty much ONLY go on the Internet. People make Facebook accounts for their unborn children.

No, I'm not kidding.



The ubiquity of technology has made many aspects of our lives better, of course. Online bill pay may be the most exciting thing that I've ever encountered as an adult. My worry, though, is that this online technology, specifically that of social networking, could allow children to never have to change. They will never have to seriously consider an opinion they don't like. They will never have to meet a new person if they don't want to. They can keep the same group of five friends, and the same group of five opinions, for as long as their smart phone is charged.

In a world where you never have to encounter someone you disagree with in a significant way, is there an incentive to ever adjust your opinion? Is there an incentive to grow as a person?

Here's the scary answer:

I don't know.

I can't think of any compelling reason to tell someone that they should change in an environment where it's not required. I can't think of an argument that would get through to them when they can just have the same five people they've known forever agree with them sycophantically that I'm wrong. Without an opposing side you have to engage with, without having to look in the mirror, I just don't know why you would.

After all, who (besides me) likes to be told they're wrong?