Is social media making me meaner?

I was chatting with a colleague earlier today and he asked for my input on something he had recently heard. Basically, he suggested that social media is making the population snarkier. The reasoning goes a little like this:

(1) If we assume that the reason most people post status updates, comments, Tweets, etc. is to get attention, and

(2) If we assume that snarkiness is more likely to get attention than otherwise banal posts, then

(3) Logically, people should be increasing the snarkiness of their postings.

Since I am rather obsessed with observing these media outlets, my friend asked if I had noticed this. And I had to really think about it. The logic does have a degree of face validity. It makes me think of Generation Me, a book I bought a year or two ago that I still haven’t read (I’ve been busy!). The book looks at people born after about 1970: a generation of people who are more self-absorbed and have less respect for others than their forebears. For the me generation, it often is about “me, me, me,” and social media support the projection–and sometimes shouting–of that individual’s identity throughout the world.

Look at Twitter. I will admit I am an avid user, and I use it for a variety of purposes, from keeping in touch with friends to posting news links to venting frustration (in 140 characters or less!). But if we break Twitter down to its most basic question–What are you doing?–it perpetuates the idea of me! Me! ME! The same can be said of Facebook status updates, which can be updated innumerable times a day if one so chooses.

But moving back to the question at hand, I have a hard time believing that social media are reshaping users’ identity in such a way as to make them snarkier, meaner, or posting solely to get attention. Obviously, these sites let users play with identity in a way that is more difficult–or even impossible–in an offline interaction. But why be mean to a friend on these sites when they know where you live? With Facebook at least, a key difference in these interactions from more anonymous sites is that the vast majority of Facebook “friends” constitute pre-existing offline relationships (see Ellison, Steinfield, & Lampe, 2007 for empirical support).

We can also look to other forms of media as introducing snarkiness into our daily lives. The two examples that pop to mind immediately as homes of snarky content are someecards and lolcats. So then, the question becomes: are sites like these a response to increasing snarkiness or are they making snarkiness more acceptable? Or both?

For me, the most basic question I come to is, Is snarkiness even a problem? I am about as snarky as a person can be, but I generally constrain my snarkiness in such a way as to make it clear that it is a part of my sense of humor and not a comment to be taken seriously. I also find myself evaluating my relationship to the individual before commenting on a photo or status update or responding to a tweet, and the snarkiness only comes out when I know the person will appreciate (or at least understand) the joke. But do I do it to draw attention to myself? Without probing too deeply into my subconscious, I would say not really.

So while I think this rationale for posting is feasible, at this time I don’t think it is necessarily the case. As ubiquitous as they are, SNSs still have something of that new car smell for many users, who still get excited when they find an old friend or when someone posts a picture from back in the day. People are genuinely interested in the conversation and interaction, much more so than getting their 596 friends to notice them. While I hate the saying, “you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar,” it is true for many people. Then there are people like myself and several of my friends, who gauge the closer of our relationships by how deeply we can insult each other (it’s harmless fun, I swear!).

Regardless, I think I’ll be taking a closer look at my Live Feed over the next week to see if any patterns of postings jump out to support this idea.

Blog Rename

While it originated as an obscure reference to a sci-fi/fantasy book I was reading at the time, my blog name tends to be a bit of a downer (unless you think my blog is all about the Elder Scrolls game, to which you would be thoroughly disappointed), so I’m thinking of renaming it to reflect the more academic nature of it. I mean, some may argue that grad school, especially at the doctoral level, could be conceived as oblivion (right now I’m thinking more along the lines of the third circle of hell, since I’m obviously a glutton for punishment), the subject matter I typically write about it not exactly apparent from the blog’s name.

Because I am braindead most of the time thanks to the stacks of reading I have, I’d like to get reader input. So please, send me your suggestions for a new name for this blog and why you think I should change the name to your choice. Or, if you think oblivion is the perfect name, tell me why I should keep it as is. And if I decide to go with one of these suggestions, maybe I’ll even send the person some delicious Vitak baked goods! (If you are unaware of my baking skills, (1) shame on you and (2) read this post and/or this post.)

So come on people, tell me your ideas!

Is our attention spread too thin?

A Wired post today brought my attention to a new book coming out this fall, Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age, by journalist Maggie Jackson. The book focuses on the Web 2.0 world, where the pressure of an infinite number of technologies has forced us to be at all places at all times, both real and virtual. Phone calls, email, meetings, IMs, Facebook messages, Twitter updates…the list goes on and on. And in our attempt to “keep up” with the ever-changing methods of communication and interaction, we are instead losing a good part of the content, and maybe ourselves. Or, at least that’s what I get from the sensationalist-driven, doomsday-is-upon-us title.

Linda Stone, a well-known technology consultant I had the pleasure of meeting during my tenure at Pew, would call this “continuous partial attention.” In the technologically driven world of 2008, we have no choice but to divide our attention between tasks. It is not only a skill to have, but expected–and sometimes demanded–of us in our daily lives. Whether it is juggling a full-time job and a family life or struggling through a PhD program in hopes of becoming the best professor and researcher out there, we can no longer afford the luxury of focusing 100% on a given task. There are too many demands on us to even contemplate such a life.

Is this a bad thing? Maybe. On the other hand, maybe it’s just not the right way to look at the situation. From the little I’ve read regarding Jackson’s upcoming book, she is right on in many ways. Sometimes I feel stretched so thin that any further addition will surely break me into a thousand pieces. But we are humans, and we can change our future. We do not need to be slaves to technology. Instead, maybe we should consider new ways of harnessing technology to give us the ability to not only step away from it for a few minutes, but maybe even turn it off for awhile.

Turn it off, you say incredulously? Yes, I am just as scared as you. But as much as we let technology be a part of our lives, we should never let it take over our lives.

And that, my friends, is your daily food for thought.