The Internet 's Impact On Social Capital

The functional unit of our society today is centered on the Internet. In our day and age, people are prone to isolation because all communication can be performed online. We are missing key human interactions and our technology is shaping

Technology has helped connect people and created friendships that without technology couldn’t happen. A big way for people to connect with each other is by using social media like Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram. Facebook connects more of us to more of our friends and family than we have ever been connected before (Document 2). Every "Like, every Share, every comment is a way for us to renew on a tiny scale our connections with our friends (Document 2). Our phones are devices that can connect us to anyone around the world in the matter of seconds (Document 5). Technology is not only connecting us with other people it is also connecting us to more information.

The internet has become a popular source used by society of a worldwide computer network that provides a variety of information and communication facilities allowing individuals to communicate with one another easily. The internet it self has brought people together but has changed the way people interact with each other, created isolation, some addiction and being unsafe. Nowadays, anything can be shared to the wide world through any device that is able to connect to the internet; where this can lead to what Charles Seife terms as “no privacy” in his article, “The Loneliness of the Interconnected.” According to Seife, the Internet’s vast interconnectivity made it possible for everyone to hear everyone else - and to be heard by everyone else.

When we think of the internet and technology we usually think of all the benefits and innovations that make up our generation. We have all the information we need right on our phones. We can also be connected with anyone or with everyone at anytime of the day, but is being connected with everyone a good thing? “The Loneliness Of The Interconnected” by Charles Seife explores this idea and shines a light on the negative effects that being connected with everyone might have. Seife’s exploration of online extremism challenge Schmidt and Cohen’s optimistic portrayal of technology by analyzing how having a voice in the ocean of the internet and being connected with everyone isn’t always positive.

There are few places on this Earth, if any, where the possibilities are truly endless. However, if you detach yourself from the physical world and emerge into the “online” world, you find that this just might actually be accurate in this realm. The World Wide Web has had so much to offer to us since the early 1990s, but with this comes controversy. Unleashed onto a plane of seemingly immeasurable freedom of anonymity, was the world ready for such responsibility? Since those early days when new emerging technology changed our lives immensely, have we at all become a better place, or have we bitten off more than we can chew, and doomed our human relations forever? Exploring these concepts are three in-depth articles, including: “Growing Up Tethered” by Sherry Turkle, “The Loneliness of the Interconnected” by Charles Seife, and “Cybersexism” by Laurie Penny. Although it is thought that the Internet brings the world together, it actually does not help us politically, culturally, and economically like one would believe, as it makes us unable to be independent, isolates us from different points of view, and encourages real-world violence against women and other minority groups.

In her call to action, The People’s Platform; Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age, Astra Taylor addresses underlying social and economic forces of the internet and differential perspectives towards it. Taylor discusses the new internet in which content is king and, people are now the product, this is called Web 2.0. She discusses this topic from a couple viewpoints; those who would believe that the internet is truly the new people’s platform and that it is the golden age of sharing and collaboration, called the Techno-optimists. The counterparts of this interpretation of the internet are what she calls the Techno-Skeptics, who have a similar mindset in that of Nicholas Carr, an author about technology in the modern age, with the

Russell’s review, “What Would Happen if You Threw a Revolution and Everyone Showed Up,” sets a discussion of the impact of the internet on our daily lives. One of Russell’s arguments against Shirky’s Cognitive Surplus is that “because of the Internet’s inherent mass organizing ability, by using it we are able to contribute to society (Russell 916).” Russell then argues that people do not contribute any more than they did before the internet. “…has he never heard of church organizations, non-profits, volunteer groups, the Boy and Girl Scouts, neighborhood watch programs, rideshare programs, Little League, food banks, the Lions Club…? The list is virtually endless, Shirky doesn’t contribute things to the public sphere, that doesn’t mean

Nicholas Carr’s “How technology created a global village -- and put us all at each other’s throats”, conveys the message that technology was contrived to join people together, but all it is doing is disjointing them. Conversely, a dark place was shaped online, over the years, and there is no sign of the situation resolving.

The authors of “Assembling Social Space” argue that everyone, no matter where they live, is locally and globally connected to people who do not necessarily live near them through media and technology. Wiley states that we are all globally connected, but live in a local way (Wiley, 2015). Living in a technology-driven society, we are able to stay connected with people and have access to resources from all around the globe. The thesis is that as individuals, we are all locally connected within our environment and ultimately globally connected due to the interconnection of these two types of societies. This is important within the field of communication because it explains how individuals are able to be locally and globally connected with people from all over the world.

50), as community building typically requires face-to-face interactions and physical symbols through which people can associate and find shared experience. Though from the advent of the internet, humans began building online communities to connect with like-minded people across the globe, Krotoski suggests the threads binding these communities together are tenuous in the absence of tangible interactions. This quality makes online communities “difficult to measure and therefore to define objectively” (p. 51) implying that digital interactions within a community provide less substance for other members to adhere. Krotoski suggests this thin state of community provides little in social capital in that online, and people only know us by the information we provide, and not information passively gleaned from physical, non-verbal

The second concept I want to talk about is virtual communities. Virtual communities are social groups whose interactions are mediated through information technologies, particularly the internet. Like modernism, virtual communities are very dependent on technology and the internet. Since science and technology has advanced in the past decade, people don’t need to go to different places to meet different people and can meet others over different social media platforms or even video games. Sometimes, those people met over the internet can become very close friends. For example, I play a lot of video games and I have acquainted myself virtually with many people playing those games. Some of them I even ended up meeting in real life and are still friends with today. Virtual communities have become such a social norm, that soon, people will have friends all over the internet. I think the aspect of virtual communities is good for society, because it allows people to have a greater awareness of other cultures all over the world. With more insight of how other societies and cultures operate, there is a greater chance to expand one's own social

Social network sites (SNSs) such as such as Friendster, CyWorld, and MySpace allow individuals to present themselves, articulate their social networks, and establish or maintain connections with others (Ellison, 2007). These sites could be used for work related situation, romance, connecting with individuals with shared interest, or creating a connection amongst college students. Facebook enables its users to present themselves in an online profile, accumulate ‘‘friends’’ who can post comments on each other’s pages, and view each other’s profiles (Ellison, 2007). Individuals can write on the wall of friends, send private message, comment on posts, as well as chat via instant messaging. Much of the early research on online communities assumed that individuals using these systems would be connecting with others outside their pre-existing social group or location, liberating them to form communities around shared interests, as opposed to shared geography (Ellison, 2007).

Society is constantly changing and will continue to change in the future. The change is predictable because people change their ideas, routines, and views frequently. One of the topics that is typically brought up when discussing the influences on how society is changing, is social networking. There are two sides to every story. One side of the effects of social networking is that it is beneficial to society by informing people on particular situations in the world and on current important events. The other side views social networking as dangerous and drama filled. While there are benefits and dangers to social networking's effects on society, I will argue that social networking has changed society more negatively than positively.

In today’s world 3 billion humans are on the internet but there are also 4 billion people that are not. In the beginning of my study on the future of the internet, I asked myself this question: is it possible that everyone could be online and globally connected? Then I asked myself how, if everyone is online, the future of the internet change the experience of everyday life? Looking back, the internet is still a relatively new phenomenon as it was first created back in the 1960’s by a computer scientist named J.C.R Licklider. He envisioned a network of computers, called the galactic network, which would allow humans to be able to share information instantly. Overtime this is how the internet developed, as many of these networks that shared

Social capital has had both positive and negative impact on the society. The birth virtual communities enabled by social media has had a mass appeal through social networks on the internet, which in turn has brought about effective social action and well-being of social groups from small voluntary organizations to larger societies.