№ 548. Social Connections and Our Well-Being

Text from The Atlantic

Marketoonist

The psychological effects of losing all but our closest ties can be profound. Peripheral connections tether us to the world at large; without them, people sink into the compounding sameness of closed networks. Regular interaction with people outside our inner circle “just makes us feel more like part of a community, or part of something bigger,”.... People on the peripheries of our lives introduce us to new ideas, new information, new opportunities, and other new people. 

 

If variety is the spice of life, these relationships are the conduit for it.

The loss of these interactions may be one reason for the growth in internet conspiracy theories in the past year, and especially for the surge in groups like QAnon. But while online communities of all kinds can deliver some of the psychological benefits of meeting new people and making friends in the real world, the echo chamber of conspiracism is a further source of isolation. “There’s a lot of research showing that when you talk only to people who are like you, it actually makes your opinions shift even further away from other groups,”.... 

 

“That’s how cults work. That’s how terrorist groups work.”

The physical ramifications of isolation are also well documented.... social isolation increases the risk of premature death from any cause by almost 30 percent. “The scientific evidence suggests that we need a variety of kinds of relationships in our lives, and that different kinds of relationships or social roles can fulfill different kinds of needs,”.... People maintain hygiene, take their medication, and try to hold themselves together at least in part because those behaviors are socially necessary, and their repetition is rewarded. Remove those incentives, and some people fall into despair, unable to perform some of the crucial tasks of being alive. In people at risk for illness, lack of interaction can mean that symptoms go unnoticed and arrangements for medical care aren’t made. Humans are meant to be with one another, and when we aren’t, the decay shows in our bodies.

№ 425. The Social Media Coliseum

The philosophers Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke have proposed the useful phrase moral grandstanding to describe what happens when people use moral talk to enhance their prestige in a public forum. Like a succession of orators speaking to a skeptical audience, each person strives to outdo previous speakers, leading to some common patterns. Grandstanders tend to “trump up moral charges, pile on in cases of public shaming, announce that anyone who disagrees with them is obviously wrong, or exaggerate emotional displays.” Nuance and truth are casualties in this competition to gain the approval of the audience. Grandstanders scrutinize every word spoken by their opponents—and sometimes even their friends—for the potential to evoke public outrage. Context collapses. The speaker’s intent is ignored.

Christoph Niemann

№ 351. Social Media = Drug

Social Media

“It’s a social-validation feedback loop … exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology. The inventors, creators – me, Mark [Zuckerberg], Kevin Systrom on Instagram, all of these people – understood this consciously. And we did it anyway.”

№ 172. Me, My Selfie and I

Who are these millenials hiding inside Gen X suits? 

The world is in capable hands, no? These kids will inherit the earth.

They like selfies, traveling and social networks. Their lives are dipped deep in tech and indulgent ecology. Yes, they swim in it like prehistoric life in the primordial soup.

Are these accurate and fair descriptions? Does it matter?

1. Self-centered,
2. tech driven and savvy,
3. unafraid to explore the physical and virtual realities and the spaces in between,
4. sexually fluid and less inhibited,
5. very visual or aural or make that sensual.

№ 83. 18th Century Social Network

Ideas travel. But there should be a feedback mechanism and a network to link the ideas, their creators and other creators.

Social networks, in all their primitive forms, proved to be the tides that brought foam and freedom, novelty, variety and dissent to distant lands.

It's interesting to actually see, not with our mind's eye, how the light that burned in the minds of these great thinkers spread across physical spaces.

Thanks Stanford.