Lucas deMey
Emerson
11/11/17
Internet paper We always hear we cannot trust everything and everyone on the internet. So it is no surprise that the controversy surrounding internet use only escalates when individuals seek to find their purpose in life while online. The internet is a wealth of information and provides people with many conveniences. However, of growing concern are the social drawbacks of the “phone zombie” and bandwagon ideas. Using the internet to forge relationships and find our purpose is proving itself to be hazardous to society. The internet evolves continuously, leaving people and their ideas behind. Relationships, professional progress, and fads can come and go in an instant. At the beginning of the day a man could be at the top of the world and within moments lose all of his hard work and progress- leaving him a shell of himself days or even hours prior. It is this constant evolution and growing dependence on the internet in all areas of life, that is changing the human species and many of our defining features.One of the dangers of an internet based life is the sheer amount of time it takes to get anything done. Modes of communication like email and IM take twice as long as a phone call, due to time spent proofreading, spell checking and correcting make the process long and sometimes pain staking. Sam Anderson mentions in his essay in “Defense of Distraction” where he talks all about the numerous and constant distractions in our lives. Anderson interviews a man named David Meyer, an expert on multitasking. Anderson claimed that Meyer made the following statement about the internet.“Because of the way the Internet works, once you become visible, you’re approached from left and right by people wanting to have interactions in ways that are extremely time-consuming. I could spend my whole day, my whole night, just answering emails.” (Anderson 3). All of this time he uses answering emails and dealing with internet in general could be spent pursuing his real goal with research. But instead he must spend a lot of time frittering and fiddling with the internet just so people will even consider looking at his work. Another danger of the internet involved with finding one’s purpose is the constant distractions. Whether it’s pop- ads, games, or social media notifications it’s really hard to stay on task with all of the endless possibilities the internet has to offer. Anderson states “It seems unrealistic, to expect people to spend all day clicking reward bars—searching the web, scanning the relevant blogs, checking email to see if a coworker has updated a project—and then just leave those distractions behind” (Anderson 5). People are losing focus on the importance of their careers or families all for the sake of a little amusement. This shows that the internet can be harmful especially because our jobs give us the means financially to pursue our purpose. If we are unemployed due to this constant distraction we may very well lose those means and be unable to attain and fulfill our purpose, leaving us with a sad hollow existence thanks to the endless flood of distraction courtesy of our internet.Another destructive property of the internet is something called the bandwagon effect,which is defined as “A psychological theory where individuals will do something primarily because other individuals are doing it, regardless of their own beliefs” (dictionary.com). This bandwagon effect is caused by the ease of sharing that is created by the internet through social media. Bill Wasik the author of “my crowd experiment : The mob project” explores the power of the bandwagon effect through experiments called flash mobs which in the end became an inadvertent fad. Wasik talks about a fear of being left behind or becoming irrelevant as a cause for this so called bandwagon effect. This effect may very well be the death of individuality which is scary for a species that thrives and grows because of our ability to think for ourselves. Being that the internet is filled with so many people throwing their opinions around, sometimes it’s easier to just agree with the majority rather than thinking for ourselves. This is one of the primary dangers another point that Wasik makes is that boredom is what leads people to join these so called bandwagon ideas, because it’s so much easier to just follow some else on their path to their purpose. Instead we must persist in forging ahead on our own paths towards finding meaning in our lives. Even if this bandwagon doesn’t satisfy one’s need for purpose, it can distract them from there hunt for purpose and state the boredom for the time being making them feel more complete.The internet can be accessed everywhere not just in front of a computer screen. A dangerous application of the internet is a plague that’s sweeping our nation known as the “phone zombie.” This is a phenomenon that is explored thoroughly by Andrew Leonard in his article “The Rise Of The Phone Zombie,” in which leonard talks of the havoc smartphones are having on our social interactions. Leonard gives the classic example of a couple on date, but instead of passionately staring into each other’s eyes, their gaze is locked onto the screens of their iphones. What type of world are we living in where we people would rather look at their twitter feed than have a conversation with the one that they love? In my personal opinion, connecting with the people around us and fostering relationships is one of the greatest purposes we have on this planet and it would be damn hard to find it, and build a sound foundation, on one’s phone screen. Leonard mentions Dan Hoyles one man Show “Each And Everything” where Hoyle vents his frustration with modern technology And pulls this quote from the show “It’s one thing when we’re all alone in our homes, connecting online,”(leonard 2) says Hoyle. “But when we’re out in public checking in on our phones, we are creating new private spaces in the public arena.”(leonard 2) By using our devices in public, we are shielding ourselves off from the world and disconnecting from all around us. Diminishing our social experience and dampening our view of the world, these “private arenas” cut us off from other humans and being the social animals that we are it could be detrimental to us finding our purpose in life as it usually involves being a part of something larger than just ourselves. Clearly it makes it more difficult to connect with others whilst in our own personal “cyber bubble”At one point in the article, Leonard quotes Dan Hoyles one man Show “Each And Everything” where Hoyle speaks of his frustration with our new found dependence on smartphones He gives this example. “I wonder how alienating it must be for the cashier to see a long line of people staring down at their phones, only raising their eyes when it is time to pay. And yet, on those rare and horrible occasions when I forget to bring my phone with me, I feel destitute, at the mercy of an unforgiving universe.”(Leonard 4) This quote shows our scary and growing dependence on the internet that we show symptoms of withdrawal if we go without it for even small periods of time. This internet addiction is extremely dangerous as it seems like no big deal people are just having fun or killing time. But the danger comes when we try to fulfill ourselves by living vicariously through the internet like in role playing games. People play thousands and thousands of hours on games like World of Warcraft or Starcraft where the game started out as maybe a place for them to have fun or blow off some steam. But at some point they thought this virtual world had more to offer than the physical world we all live in, so they sink themselves into this world with orcs and elves because it’s easier to find meaning when there’s giant arrows pointing towards the path to success. So they pour hour after hour into these huge games with no ending. But what they don’t realize is that these hours could be spent attaining something different, such as, working towards a goal or purpose in the physical world that would fulfill to the point where they wouldn’t need this online escape from reality. They could stay in the physical world and interact with real people and make real progress and rid themselves of their online addiction and become enthralled with the real world.
In our modern world that is essentially built around the internet, it is easy to get lost online with all of the games and ads. We must remember to pull our heads out of the clouds every now and then and hunt for our purpose in the physical world. Instead of staying content with the virtual rat race that a lot of people allow themselves to be content with. I’m not saying the internet’s bad, I’m saying that that we need to be careful with how closely we identify ourselves through internet. Once we find ourselves getting too close to that virtual world, we will start losing our social skills. That is when we’re going to find ourselves in trouble because without social interactions in person we then must ask ourselves if we are really human or are we just organic button pressing machines. So we must stay true to the physical world and find our purpose within it and then we’ll finally be on the right track.
Works Cited
Works Cited
Anderson, Sam. “In Defense of Distraction.” NYMag.com, Ny Mag, nymag.com/news/features/56793/.
Leonard, Andrew. “Rise of the Phone Zombies: What We Lose when Technology Gives Us Everything.” Salon, Salon.com, 8 Aug. 2014, www.salon.com/2014/08/08/rise_of_the_smartphone_zombies_what_we_lose_when_technology_gives_us_everything/.
Wasik, Bill. “The Mob Project.” BillWasik.com, 6 May 2009, billwasik.com/post/104403795/the-mob-project.
