Notice Bored or Notice Board?

Psychologist Sherry Turkle, in a recent TED talk, summed up the current evolution of the Social Media phenomena as “I share – therefore I am”. 

I found that to be quite a scary observation, the implication being that unless I share I don’t exist!

Turkle claims that Social Media allows people to feel connected to others, but on their own terms.  Just like Goldilocks, not too much and not too little – just the right amount.  It allows people to avoid feeling alone and provides feedback that someone is listening.  It also allows people to present the face that they desire to present rather than to risk the vulnerability inherent in a real conversation. 

Turkle also claims that the core issue, that Social Media offers to hide, is people's fear of intimacy, and their discomfort with solitude.  What a narrow space that seems to be!

While intimacy and solitude are certainly the boundaries of relationship – in an all-or- nothing sense – I know from experience that an average person may fear one extreme or the other, but not usually both.  And a personal relationship between any two partners will, more often than not, display that dynamic.  Furthermore it’s true that a loving relationship over time provides the healing space for either extreme. 

Social Media does technically allow easy avoidance of negative relationships and easy seeking out of what the seeker would consider to be positive ones, but to present Social Media as providing an avoidance of natural relationship therapy is, in my opinion, labelling 700 million people as damaged.

I think there is something entirely different going on… 

The content of Facebook communications, from my studying some 250 postings from a diverse bunch of people, is certainly the minutiae of relationship.  The flavour of any one individual’s content becomes predictable – and that allows the personality of the sharer to shine through.  By sharing what appears to be the shallow trivia of daily experience (our humanness) we can build a deeper relationship with others – the obvious example being mothers and their children.

But here is the point that Turkle missed… Social Media is not about relationship at all – not in the sense of a substitute for the loving space that can only occur in one-on-one daily co-existence. 

Social Media is about relationship in the plural sense, which can only be defined as ‘community’.  If you’re familiar with the work of Ken Wilber, it exists exclusively in the ‘we’ quadrant.  That space is about being part of something, satisfying a need to belong, in a culture, in a family, in a network, in a community.  It’s about our “collective internal experience”, storytelling, shared values and even organised religion.

Suddenly there is a new light on the subject!  The overwhelming popularity of Social Media shows that it is filling a huge need for that sense of community, particularly in the younger generations.  Where was that sense lost?  Probably through evolution, but I suspect it’s been in deficit since around the time that television arrived.

So each ‘tweet’, each ‘share’, each genuine ‘like’ is a contribution freely made towards rebuilding that sense of community, not at the level of the ‘local village’ of 60+ years ago, but at the level the global village.  Evolution will always find a way to bring a balance to consciousness and we are merely the conduit through which she operates!  The ‘local village’ also allowed a ‘not one of us’ or a ‘them and us’ experience in social groups, locations, and religion.  In the ‘global village’ the potential is that there is just ‘us’.  Bring it on I say!

So next time you notice you’re bored – don’t just sit there – post something on the community notice board and help evolution along!