Are we trapped in an escapist world of digital culture?

This blog is on my personal opinion of how technology can be used to escape from our everyday lives, my viewpoints are directed from a cynical point of view. Technology allows us to momentarily escape from our reality; it ultimately distracts us from being present in our daily lives. I don’t think it is a bad thing to want to escape from our norm and it is actually quite healthy for us to indulge in other ‘realities’ from time to time. But the problem arises when people use these additional realities to escape from their current situations and technology has provided the platform to do just that. Television, internet, video games and social media (to name the few) can all be used as a method of escapism – for example watching a movie to help take your mind off current situation.

We don't have in our culture a healthy understanding and respect for the value of Being, which is simply being present in the moment, not trying to go somewhere, not trying to accomplish anything but, just present. ~ Shakti Gawain ~

In this blog, I will be discussing escapism through the use of technology specifically by using social media. To be quite frank, I still can’t figure out why social media is still called SOCIAL because it clearly isn’t. In my opinion, using technology as a means to communicate is very convenient at specific times but in no way social. To me socialising is about connecting with people in real life, not through an electric void of ‘nothingness’. In modern society we can recognize the significant role technology (social media) has in our world, take a glance at the cafes that used to be social environments but are now full with people glued to their lap tops or I pads.

“We have invented inspiring and enhancing technologies, yet we have allowed them to diminish us.” Sherry Turkle

I agree with this quote in terms of what could happen if social media replaces our natural ability to communicate effectively with each other. When technology replaces people -we can see this happening already for example operators/self-checkouts etc.

I would prefer not to sound hypocritical because I do in fact use social media however I am very aware of its effects on myself and surrounding.  I value personal connections to people way more than I do the virtual, in my view; social media is full of misconceptions and in some cases false projections of one’s identity. I also think that messages sent through social media are far less valuable, I would appreciate a letter sent from a close friend instead of a casual Facebook ‘poke’. The whole theory behind social media is this feeling of being ‘connected’ but for me it has the opposite effect. Yes it is nice to communicate with people irrespective of time and place but I feel far more rewarded interacting with people in everyday life.