I would like to echo many current authors in saying that literacy is under a lot of strain. Or rather, the digital age dissolves literacy.
It is the age of Sparknotes, and nobody wants to turn any pages. Reading requires stamina, and technology interrupts this. Also, I am suspicious of technology, particularly as it pertains to new forms of cyber communication. I had a professor equate Facebook to Orwell’s “Big Brother”; except, he explained, “It’s not the government who’s watching us. We’re watching each other.”
We can have three crucial misconceptions about social networking. One, that it has no effect on the depth and health of our relationships; two, that it has no effect on our perspective of ourselves; and three, that no outside organization is observing us.
I had been turning the idea over in my mind to delete my Facebook account. I wonder what would happen if I deactivated my account. I’m sure I would become keenly aware of how much time I had wasted. I’m also sure I would feel more content—no longer comparing my life to someone else’s via profile surfing.
Social networks, though an extension of off-line interaction, separate us and invite us to portray idealized personas of ourselves. Deactivating my Facebook account would also make me call people, or better yet, speak to them in person.
I have noticed my participation in the Facebook network has correspondingly inflated my ego. If I deactivated my account, I am convinced an idol would be removed in my life, that idol being myself. Deactivating a tool in which I can gaze at myself and proclaim my excellent daily activities and portray all I think and desire and hope for can only help me overcome the tendency to bow down and worship myself. It would also cure my false depiction of reality. Pride and an inflated ego are forms of non-reality: I and no one else truly sees myself the way my pride does. Deactivating such a tool can only help in developing Christ-like humility.
It is the Age of Information, and correspondingly, it is the Age of Me. It is the Age of worshiping myself. It is the Age of portraying myself with all my technological savvyness: nothing is out of my reach or impossible for me.
(Does your skin not crawl at this? Does your stomach not churn? Yet we must admit this is the tone of all our current advertising.)
It is also incorrect to think no one is observing in the realm of social networks. If you care to know more, please read “You are the Ad.”
Text messages and status updates bombard the air frequencies of our students’ minds, even in the classroom. Attention is a battle. Deactivating my Facebook account is almost a protest: a quiet, peaceful protest to constant and overwhelming stimulation.
Hallelujah to a life of simplicity.
**"You Are The Ad"
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