Does social media show us what’s missing?
By Molly FlattThis barely one-minute video from PBS’s Digital Nation show is a little gem. Watch Sherry Turkle, clinical psychologist and director of the M.I.T. Initiative on Technology and Self, talk about ‘the virtual mirror’:
Although I’m wary of the ’social media symbolises the emptiness of our real lives’ shtick (just see Stefana Broadbent’s recent TED Talk on how the internet enables intimacy for a refutation), I like the idea that the vast possibilities of social media can point up what is less than satisfying in our every day lives, but in a positive and constructive, rather than depressing, way.
Take our relationship with brands. Once we got a taste of the kind of personal, creative customer/brand relationship social media makes possible thanks to those early adopters and start-ups and long tail businesses, we were no longer happy with the cold corporate broadcasting we got in our daily lives. And once we heard others talking about great customer experiences, we wondered why we were missing out. We demanded more.
Sometimes, emerging from an online session dipping into a sea of passionate opinion and having a myriad of tiny, juicy, inspiring conversations, unfettered by geography, I emerge into the grey London air a little deflated. But this is a good thing, if it drives me to seek more social experiences and offerings in the often less immediately satisfying, but more complex and rewarding offline world.
Mirrors can be scary, but useful.
