Both Sherry Turkle and Susan Greenfield bring up the idea that the recent growth of social media has resulted in a culture where people prefer to have superficial relationships in great quantity online over a handful of meaningful, intimate relationships in the physical world. These women both touch on the idea that an online interaction can never hold the same meaning as a face-to-face conversation. Greenfield mentions how that online conversation lacks the unedited, back and forth mentality of a real physical meeting. She brings up the idea that “When you get to know people on Facebook whom you’ve hardly met, you may think at first that you know them; but it turns out that you really only know the artificial things” (Greenfield 115). In her statement, Greenfield is entirely correct, as when we go on Facebook, what do we see first? We see what TV shows and movies a person likes, or where a person’s favorite place to eat is. However, we never get to understand the little nuances about that person, the things that only a face to face conversation can show. Turkle adds more to this idea, as she mentions that many people feel they can substitute physical interactions with a multitude of online ones. She strongly opposes this methods, as she feels that “Connecting in sips may work for gathering discrete bits of information…but they don’t really work for learning about each other, for really coming to know and understand each other. And we use conversations with each other to learn how to have conversations with ourselves” (Turkle). Turkle’s point that these mini-interactions can equate to a real conversation is spot on, the online relationships are too superficial, as there will always be the missing element from the physical world. Both Turkle and Greenfield share this similar view that the increase in social media use is pulling us away from each other. We continue to hide behind our screens, satisfied at only know the “artificial” facts about one another, scared of actually having to speak to someone face-to-face.
