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The Pros And Cons Of Social Media

Decent Essays

While some fear that if humanity does not disconnect from this always-on culture that Turkle spoke of, people will become alienated from one another. According to Turkle’s theory, when people become alienated from others the isolation brings to light that people have allowed their overworked and overscheduled lives to affect how they connect with other people. Hence, people no longer have time to sit down and make a phone call. Instead, they send out a quick text, thus allowing texting to become a central form of communication (Alone Together 3). Although people are not physically shutting themselves off from one another, Wendy Leung, a journalist for The Globe and Mail and author of “Does social media bring us closer – or make us loners?” conveys a valid point. “We often live in our own bubbles, simultaneously reaching out and closing ourselves off to others through the use of technology” (Leung). According to Rosen’s research, he establishes that there is a “difference between connecting and communicating,” which is measured, similarly to economics, through social capital. The term social capital was coined by Alexis de Tocqueville, a French political scientist in the first half of the 19th century becoming widely used in the late 1990’s. Social capital is a type of cultural capital, where social networks are key, and transactions are based on trust and cooperation for the common good (Wikipedia). Based on Rosen’s research, real-world interactions create a bonding social

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