- https://thelongandshort.org/machines/ab-testing-facebook-social-experiments
- How through social media we come together to form a larger whole, it is a platform where people can all gather together to discuss certain things, or to see how others are living or what they may be feeling in their lives, no matter the topic. This community that is created can quickly develop into a place of bandwagon emotions or feelings instead of a space to voice your own opinions. It can develop quickly into other people influencing how you feel, so instead of having many different feelings on a matter, it becomes a large force which influences how individuals feel. Telling us that this space of shared, large scale communication is altering how we feel about thing in our lives. Therefore it is changing the way people find meaning in their environment, we are conforming and adopting the thoughts of others instead of creating, and standing by, our own meanings or ideas. When it comes to being able to create their own meaning or purpose in their lives, it can become more and more difficult with the inclusion of the internet, since as a whole, the users are always being manipulated to feel a certain way.
- https://aeon.co/essays/if-the-internet-is-addictive-why-don-t-we-regulate-it
- When it comes to the internet, and the constant connection which we have come to be accustomed to, is it delaying our abilities to find our own purpose or meaning in our lives?
- If we spend our time checking our emails, or our phones because we have been trained over time to see that as a normal behavior, is it changing how we view our lives and our purpose? Our purpose as individuals who live on this earth, as I see it, is not to sit in front of a screen constantly pressing the refresh button, waiting and waiting for a text or an email to pop in. There is more to life than incessantly checking my phone, yet most of the time, what do you find me doing, looking down at my technology waiting for a response or notification for anything. By checking this so often, like a pigeon taping the glass in a Skinner box only to be rewarded occasionally, is giving up parts of our own freedom of self, and that is sacrificing some of our own purpose and meaning to the control technology has over us. When we spend so much time looking at our lives on the internet and through technology it becomes nearly impossible for people to take the time in their own lives to form their own meanings and purpose outside of the technological life.
a little look at whats happenin
