Technology & Self Concept

How many friends do you have on Facebook? It seems that a growing number of people, younger people in particular, derive a sense of self worth by how many Facebook friends they have. This despite statistics which suggest that many Facebook pages are riddled with friendships of people who have never engaged in any form of interaction apart from ‘accepting’ the other person. Acceptance may be key to the phenomena of improved self-esteem because of having many friends. It is possibly the simple act of accepting, or seeking acceptance from, another human being which is sufficient to make us feel good about ourselves.

Is the number of Facebook friends a person has indicative of how popular they are? Maybe, maybe not. It seems there are actually instructional websites which will teach you to be more popular on Facebook.  Unfortunately, I don’t think anyone except the self deluded individual would consider that strategy a mark of popularity.

How many texts do you get when you turn your cell? I can actually remember a time when people were happy to have moments of respite from social engagement. These days if you don’t have a barrage of messages to respond to when you turn on your phone, you’re a leper. The biggest problem I can see with this, apart from the time you have to waste answering, is that text popularity is by necessity a self fulfilling prophesy. If you text others, you’ll get texts back. Sadly it doesn’t actually mean that all these people want to engage with you, they are quite probably just stuck in the same mindless trap.

On that note, this is a cute text making the rounds:

A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I-------------------------------------------------------------------U,V,W,X,Y,Z. WHAT R U LOOKING FOR? I KILLED ALL THOSE WHO WERE BETWEEN I & U