Ironically, one major danger of too many friends may be damage to self-esteem. Contrary to expectations, SNS do not help those with low self-esteem by giving them a platform to express themselves without the pressure of social anxiety that real encounters can generate. Rather, they amplify their problems. The trouble with individuals with low self-esteem is that they talk more openly about the negative aspects of their lives and personality, which are not appealing topics of conversation for those on the Internet. The irony is that they may feel more secure in revealing things about themselves on SNS, but the rest of us do not want to hear how bad their lives are, which leads us to push them away.12
We are so self-obsessed that we tend to only pay attention to the information that relates to us. When you accumulate large numbers of friends on SNS, this is a tangible measure of popularity. When someone of high status, such as a celebrity, follows you on Twitter, then you can bask in their reflected glory as someone worthy of their attention.13 The whole SNS phenomenon may have originally been intended to share experiences and opinions, but has become a mechanism for narcissism.
‘Selfies’ are the latest craze – posting pictures of ourselves so that others can look at us. Even at the memorial ceremony for Nelson Mandela, heads of state were taking selfies. A 2013 poll by Samsung, one of the manufacturers of the ubiquitous camera phones, revealed that selfies accounted for 30 per cent of pictures taken by eighteen- to twenty-four-year-olds.14 On Facebook, the largest of the SNS, its users click ‘Like’ 2.7 billion times and share 300 million photographs per day.15 This can lead to an inflated sense of self-esteem, boosted by all the ‘Like’s, positive comments or recommendations that others bestow upon us. This concern for what others think can also lead to extremism caused by polarization. If we only listen to those who agree with us, then the tendency will be to become more certain of our opinions, intolerant to criticism or, worse still, to become more radical in order to be seen to be more forthright.16
Some individuals use SNS to bully and harass. Already there has been a spate of teenage suicides attributed to cyberbullying, though it is not clear whether this reflects a significant increase in this troubled age group.17 We can also become indignant and intolerant of others more easily on the Internet than in a real-life encounter. Somehow, like the road rage that we have all witnessed or experienced when drivers are isolated in their cars, people behave differently when they are not in a face-to-face situation. The Internet is a place to vent anger or take revenge on others from the comfort of our own home. Nobody likes to be criticized, but criticism can be particularly painful on the Internet because it is such a public arena. What were once local and personal grievances that could be settled by a measured response or gesture can escalate into dramas broadcast to the world to reveal the sense of injustice the injured party feels.
For many, it seems that we have gone too far with the Internet, but the revolution in social behaviour has only really just begun. Increasingly, everything we do and everywhere we go is being shared with others. Every piece of software, every purchase, every choice we make is no longer an individual secret but a valuable piece of data worth sharing. Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the Internet and a digital visionary, predicts that soon our clothing will be capable of relaying information up to the net.18 Already most of us possess smartphones that keep wanting to share information about where we are, what we are doing and what we like. We no longer have to pay for many services and applications; we simply have to let others know that we are using them across the SNS. This is because businesses know that social information is the key to success. The individual choices that we think are ours are being used to inform the group, which in turn is being used to influence our choices in a vast online social experiment of conformation bias.
We really do not have a choice. It is becoming impossible to be anonymous. Just about all of us in the West are dependent on the goods and services of others that we have to purchase. In the past this could be done in anonymous transactions, but eventually hard cash will disappear and so will our capacity to remain elusive. Transactions will all become digital and, with that, your identity will be used to catalogue your activity.
As we increasingly go online, algorithms that keep track of our search activity will seek to anticipate what we want and will tailor the choices made available to us by only sending us the information that best fits our search requirements. Marketing companies want to personalize their offerings to each of us. The problem is that this tailoring creates ‘filter bubbles’, where information deemed less relevant is shielded from us.19 In the drive to produce increasingly personalized functionality on websites by monitoring our activity, there is currently a big data gold rush where companies such as Google and Facebook are collecting personal information that can be sold on to marketing companies. With these vast databases, the collective opinion of the groups to which we belong will not only begin to shape the decisions we make but limit the options we are offered in an attempt to optimize the choices we have to make.
It is all meant to make life more convenient but it will also make it more conventional. Where once Western independence and Eastern interdependence existed as geographically separated cultural social norms, the global reach of the Internet and the way our choices are being shaped and curtailed by the behaviour of the group threatens our capacity to maintain unique identity and privacy.
It is happening right now. Soon we may have no choice at all. The virtual world is spilling over into the real world. The technology already exists with Google glasses, where the wearer can upload live sights and sounds to the Internet for others to watch (though Google claims this will be regulated). Soon the technology will be so small as to be invisible, so that you will not be aware that you are being watched. People will never be sure that they are truly alone or having a private conversation. This was the prediction in George Orwell’s 1984 and became the inspiration for the hit reality TV show Big Brother in the last decade. Contestants willingly participated in Big Brother for the prospect of fame and celebrity status, but were really selected by producers because they were the most colourful and often dysfunctional individuals – a modern version of the Victorian freak shows described in Chapter 3. Still, applicants to those shows made the choice to be watched, and we as the audience made the choice to watch. Today, the Internet threatens to put all of us under surveillance whether we like it or not.
When modern humans first left Africa some 60–70,000 years ago, they had the necessary social expertise to live together, and to seek out new territories as the vast Northern ice sheets began to recede. They communicated and cooperated with brains that were able to pass knowledge on to each new generation. They developed feelings, behaviours and thoughts that were evolved to keep them connected. At the end of the last Ice Age 20,000 years ago, humans began to settle down and change from a nomadic lifestyle to one where they learned to cultivate crops and rear animals.
Throughout our evolution, domestication has provided strength in numbers for the individual, but that same domestication that enabled us to live so well together now threatens to eradicate the individual. We have become so dependent on others that few of us could be self-sufficient and there is little sign that this co-dependency has reached its peak. Co-dependency provides an easier life and this increasingly relies on information technology. However, we seem to be largely unaware that this innovation is being used to both monitor and shape the way we live.