The Way We Live Now: I Tweet Therefore I Am Summary
1490 Words6 Pages
Growing up in this generation, I have an understanding of what it is like to be raised in the digital world of the internet. As social media was introduced in the early 2000s, it became a simple and efficient way of connecting people all across the globe at lightning speed. Social media became a revolutionary outlet for people to express their thoughts and feelings. Using it to share our moments and everyday experience with people was very easy to learn and it became quite addicting. Growing communities such as Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace, made it possible for one to form an identity online in the comfort of their home. In her essay, “The Way We Live Now: I Tweet, Therefore I Am”, Peggy Orenstein, an author of several best-selling books,…show more content… Users are immediately attracted to the idea of being able to share everyday moments from their little world as well as observing the little worlds of others’ through the screen. Orenstein describes her experience with social media and how quickly she adapted to the regimen of Twitter culture as an “unnatural self-consciousness: processing my experience instantaneously, packaging life as I lived it” (Orenstein 347). It’s understandable why social media has appealed to the masses. It can feel utterly liberating to be able to share a random thought that crossed our minds and have it documented in real…show more content… It is impossible to really know what tone people are trying to convey in their messages if you’re not talking face-to-face. This could lead to miscommunication, and perhaps, the end of relationships. Studies done on 14,000 University of Michigan college students from 1979-2009 revealed that the trait of empathy has been decaying (Orenstein 348). It was concluded that the sharpest decline of the trait has occurred since the year 2000, possibly because of the increase use of the internet and the beginnings of social media. Empathy is arguably the most important trait one can have. The ability to understand and share feelings to one another is essential to the development of our conscience. A dominant trait found in serial killers happens to be the lack of empathy, so in order to save our humanity, we need to be