Analysis Of Jonathan Franzen's Liking Is For Cowards

In the modern world of today, social media has become apart of the average person's life. Scrolling through countless images of people with perfect lives. It creates jealousy and depression. This needs to stop. While some believe that social media is a fun way to express yourself, it actually portrays a false image of life because these profiles only show the good in life and often look perfect every day.

Imagine receiving a text from one of your friends; a hilarious joke they had thought of on a whim. You could send a laughing-face emoji or the more common "lol" text back, but it could never take the place of both of your side-splitting laughs filling the room if you were together. A group text couldn't even come close to what a night out with friends would be. Technology is creating a deadening power on society by disconnecting people from the world around them, replacing the meaningfulness of human interaction, and simplifying thoughts and pleasures to only the most immediate.

For years and years, the internet has progressed so much. So much that communication and our lifestyles have reached a whole new level. One of the many revolutionary inventions is called social networking sites or social media. Social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and many more, are where people gather on the internet, create a personalized profile about themselves, and interact with other people around the world. Social media can help contact friends, family, and other people long distance. However, our priorities have completely changed to “life isn’t measured by the number of breaths you take, but by how many likes you get on Instagram.” With social media, people seem to lose touch from reality. This whole “me, me , me”

I believe that there are “right” and “wrong” ways to use social media. It can be a wonderful thing, and I’ve been known to use it every day. It’s a way to catch up with friends I haven’t seen in a while, a place to find information, etc. However,

No one wants to talk face-to-face with anyone anymore. It’s ‘awkward’, ‘tiring’, and just unnecessary in the eyes of today’s youth, but so what? That’s the charm of it; it’s real. The fun of conversation is to make inside jokes, and tease people, and have deep conversations, and laugh at yourself later, and learn life lessons, and gain confidence, but that’s impossible over text. Technology takes away so much of life's joys and eccentricity, and makes life altogether less valuable and memorable for the newest generations. Actual communication provides so much texts can’t, and never will.

Over the last century, technology has infiltrated almost every aspect of human life. From how we communicate, to how we learn, or even to how we do household chores, technology has influenced it all for most people in American society. In Sherry Turkle’s essay, “How Computers Change the Way we think,” she argues how the technological advancements of the computer have changed the way we think and how it has impacted our daily lives in today’s society (287). A specific aspect the author mentions is the way technology has changed the way we communicate with others. Even though Turkle does not specifically mention texting as a primary form of communication, texting has become one of the most popular types of communication and also carries its own way of thinking and aesthetic. Texting as a way of communication has affected grammar and language used, the speed and efficiency of correspondence, and ability to always be connected to those in one's circle of friends, family, and acquaintances.

As the world enters a new era of technological progression and evolution, the popularity and use of technology for entertainment and more practical uses has skyrocketed. I have been alive long enough to observe some of the changes taking place. Some of these changes include including nearly everyone in high school texting on smartphone, so many people are choosing to talk over the internet rather than in person. We are truly in an age of technology, a sort of future imagined by those before us, where people keep their calendars on their phones and do work on tablets and computers instead of sheets of paper, and can video chat with anyone anywhere around the globe. With all of these huge changes happening to our world, I have truly been drawn

Everywhere we look around us now is some sort of technology taking over and the problem with that is we no longer engage with one another as we did twenty years ago. It was not long ago that hand held devices were non-existent. During those good ole days people sparked up conversations during dinner, they were caught outside passing around a ball with their children and hardback books were not just on a shelf as apart of the décor.

Society has a lot of downfalls, whether if it is the traffic light dysfunctions, the horrible pedestrian rules, or the unfair healthcare policies. However, one thing that has truly diminished our society as a whole is the use of social media. Social media has really taken a toll on every age group in America. Individuals are so obsessed with creating a perfect life on social media that expensive gourmet meals, lavishing vacation spots and endless partying are shown on a daily basis. These same people are those who live in two-bedroom apartments, own cheap clothing and eat “TV dinner” as a three-course meal. It is pretty sad that our world has come to the point that “faking” is the new “making”.

An unnamed student admin of an opinion column out of the University of California Santa Barbara states “Little by little, Internet and mobile technology seems to be subtly destroying the meaningfulness of interactions we have with others, disconnecting us from the world around us, and leading to an imminent sense of isolation in today’s society.” The student seems to follow the idea that our sense of community is narrowed to the technology we put in front of our faces each and every day. What she doesn’t address are all the benefits and new types of communities able to form from it. A common trend in those who share this belief is that they offer no solutions to fix this so-called problem of too much technological communication. The reason is simple: they are unable to do so. Technological communication has become so prevalent in the last few decades that it would be nearly impossible to instruct people not to use it as much. It has been infused into homes and workplaces with no intentions of being removed. Now that most people have a reliance on it and see its beneficial and communal values, there is no need to cut back on its usage unless it is a personal

With technology constantly on the rise, it’s becoming harder for people to put down their smartphones and tablets. People choose in how they would like to portray who they are as a person differently. Some prefer to stay out of the limelight while others consider themselves famous based upon follower count. Social media has become a phenomenon. If someone is constantly active on the internet it could be for many reasons, they may be insecure, self absorbed, or just trying to figure out who they are. They begin to rely on “followers”, which are those who will subscribe to their feed and posts, “likes”, and comments. They may choose to share personal stories, food, fashion or experiences

Technology- specifically cell phones have consumed people. Walking in the hallway or down the street you can see people glued to their phones. The easy access to Instagram and other social media apps have allowed people to share their life to the world. However the purpose has seemed to shift, from sharing parts of our lives out of happiness we now do it for the amount of likes we receive. I know people who will constantly check Instagram after they post to see how many likes they have gotten. We have reduced our values to the amount of likes we get on our post or the number

Technology and the internet is amusing, intriguing, and powerful. But have you ever thought about what these things are doing to us? Is it slowly drifting us away from who we really are, or is it letting us open new ways to success? In the book The Shallows, it said that Socrates didn’t like the idea of written words, “-but he argues that a dependence on the technology of the alphabet will alter a person’s mind, and not for the better...writing threatens to make us shallower thinkers, he says, preventing us from achieving the intellectual depth that leads to wisdom and true happiness.” (55) Perhaps, his thinking and point of view describes more than what happened in the past, if only he can see what technology is doing to us now. As Socrates described us as shallow, it opens our eyes to see how much our community relies on technology now. Anywhere you go, everyone has a phone, apple watch, or any mobile device. People now a days can’t imagine a life without technology or the internet, we can compare that to when clocks were brought into society. We can’t imagine life without the clock, and we can connect that to our technology now. This connects to how we communicate, us human beings were always shaped to interact with other human beings, but we tend to find ourselves interacting with the technology that is just one reach away. For example, in the book they use the Apple Siri, we give her all the traits of a real person and conversate with her very often. Technology is

All these social media sites and all the newest technology, and even materialism are growing every day and are, in the end, taking over the entire world. Where, there is one thing that in today's general public fights out giving or accepting material things. The “like” function that you retrieve, or give while being on your smartphone or being on your computer. Individuals will change whom they truly are keeping in mind the end goal to accomplish "likes". We make our social media profiles, where we only show the best in our lives and we even try making us perfect for what the society says is right. This prompts to loss of cooperation in social matters and perplexity and trouble in real life relationships. As indicated by Jonathan Franzen, this won't give a person real satisfaction, yet rather it will make you, in the end, discouraged, by the fact that you tricked people into liking you. The people that hide too much behind their technology, will eventually have to leave this materialistic lifestyle and they will experience that they have lived their life wrongly. They will have a hard time keeping these real life relationships and even worse when it gets to

Uploading our everyday lives to social media is considered the ‘norm’ nowadays. With the millennial generation growing up, technology has become a huge part of our lives. Many of us upload our lives as a way of not only informing loved ones about our life, but also as a way of showing off how amazing our lives truly are. Is this really true? Does social media accurately portray our lives or is it all simply a sham? Narcissism plays a huge role in our presence on social media, such as how many likes or comments can we get, or who is the most popular. I, for one, believe that our presence on social media is driven by a fear of being forgotten, but does this really help keep us present in people's lives, or are we actually being