The Digital Revolution’s Challenges to Our Humanity: Part 4--The Social Lecture 2

This is the second of two lectures on the social harms by the digital revolution.  

In the pre-digital world, we desired and sought out relations with those that we had common beliefs and interests; however, the degree of homogeneity of those beliefs and interests was limited by the potential number of people we could interact with.  We also had access to limited information which prevented many of our beliefs from going very deep.  The breadth of values that we held to be vital was also limited due to lack of reinforcement and/or exposure by those in the culture.  Finally, we had many more in-person interactions which provided a greater richness to our communication while also promoting empathy thus preventing us from being overly harsh all the while reinforcing the virtues of love and temperance.  

In the digital world, we still desire and seek out people with shared beliefs and interests, but due to the limitless number of people we can easily find greater homogeneity of beliefs and thoughts and thus we now expect and even demand rigid conformity.  Limitless information and the echo chamber effect reinforce our viewpoints through the phenomenon of bias confirmation thus deepening more of our beliefs and thoughts.  The media, politicians, and influencers now use the digital platform as a vehicle for promoting more things as vital to our humanity thus broadening the number of things that people feel to be nonnegotiable in their relationships and at the same time increasingly demonizing those who hold different views.  The limited nature of the digital world decreases our ability to regularly see and hear the critical nonverbal aspect of our communication thus limiting both the message and our empathy.  This sets the stage for more vulnerable narcissists to become cyberbullies while many bystanders join in through the “bandwagon” effect.  Anger and pride are being stoked and reinforced in many people while everyone is experiencing greater anxiety over the threat of being cancelled all leading to increasing polarization and social division.  

References

How Cancel Culture Psychology and Toxic Tribalism Impact Young Adult Mental Health by the Newport Institute

Superbia: The Perils of Pride. The Power of Humility by Dr. Steve Willing 

Social Media Is Killing Your Friendships by Jennifer Chesak

Has Social Media Ruined The Idea Of Friendship? by Ira Bedzow

Media Madness:  The Corruption of Our Political Culture by James Bowman

What Are The Mental Health Effects of Cancel Culture? by Refocus 

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