Dr. Aric Sigman thinks that social networks are responsible for increasing our risks of heart disease and all other sorts of pernicious ailments by decreasing the amount of time we spend interacting with other humans face to face.
As someone who spends a lot of time thinking about and participating in electronically mediated communications - social and otherwise - I can unequivocally say that this is not true. The electronic communications actually facilitate more face to face interaction with a wider range of people, many of whom I would not interact with if not for the virtual community we have created.
There's another side to this argument that provides, perhaps, some mediating data. According to my beloved Edward T. Hall's theory of proxemics, humans and other biological creatures have an automatic shut-off mechanism - in the form of hormones - which results in total sociopathic behavior when population density reaches a certain point. So, it may be that the massive numbers of human interactions we are forced to have - many involuntary - has forced us online into self-selected tribes.
Though email and chat are no replacement for eye contact, the ubiquity (in the west, where these "problems" are occurring) of screen based devices is making eye contact over the distances necessitated by a globalized society possible, even convenient.
Finally, concluding that it is our media that is at fault is irrelevant, and ultimately pointless. WE are the creators of the society and the technology that drives these usage patterns. The last thing we need is someone telling us that what we're doing is bad for us: guilt and a sense of failure contribute more to the stress that causes circulatory conditions than anything else.
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2.19.2009
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