Social media has taken full control of the way we go about living our lives. The power that it withholds over us determines who our “friends” are, plans what we are doing for every moment of our day and also has consumed us with false visions of the way we perceive our world. In Malcolm Gladwell’s article, “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted”, Gladwell discusses the negative side of pairing activism and social media together. Social media places activists in a negative light by their ability to hide behind a screen. Thus, this negative light that social media brings, also brings upon a negative light when counterfactually thinking. We have allowed ourselves to let social media define our past, present, and future, which in result has lead us to creating possible worlds in a dimmer light. In Alison Gopnik’s article, “Possible Worlds: Why Do Children Pretend?”, it is clear that possible worlds are created based upon our knowledge and emotion. Both knowledge and emotion circulate around social media in our modern day. It is ashamed that we have allowed ourselves to perceive the world we live in through the eyes of a computer screen, instead of our own. Although social media has a surplus of advantages, we are currently using it against ourselves in light of social activism. The possible worlds that revolve around social media tend to bring about a negative connotation. In the modern world it is very easy to communicate with others through our technological advances. However, this also makes fighting and miscommunication much easier due to the fact that participants can hide behind a screen. These past possible worlds that both Gladwell and Gopnik describe bring about negative connotation. Gladwell states, “The marvels of communication technology in the present have produced a false consciousness about the past— even a sense that communication has no history, or had nothing of importance to consider before the days of television and the internet” (Gladwell 135). When this statement is broken down you can understand that Gladwell makes a point of discussing that past possible worlds have gained their negative connotation due to modern technology. The possible worlds that generate from a negative perspective tend to originate from “the saddest words of tongue and pen [thinking] ‘it might have been’” (Gopnik 165). Social media tends to blur our vision of the past and create possible worlds which in our eyes portray a negative image. Regardless of if we want to admit it or not, social media plays a big part in how we go about living our lives. Everything we do is broadcasted on a larger scale for all to see. Social media has contributed to the way we live day to day “psychologists have found that counterfactual thinking is absolutely pervasive in everyday life and deeply affects our judgements, our decisions, and our emotions” (Gopnik 163). (make sure you write about what the author is implying in this quote) As the psychologists have described, it is nearly impossible to go a day without creating counterfactual thoughts. Our counterfactual thoughts are then broadcasted in the media world. Social media and counterfactual thinking participate hand in
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We have to live our lives to truly understand how the world around us works. We are able to make advances in our world and “its because we know about this world that we can create possible worlds” (Gopnik 181). The technological advances in this world could help create possible worlds if we used our technology the proper way. But, due to the way we have been using social media, it has only hurt our possible world creation. It has been proven that events prior to the use of social media have bettered our lives. Events that took police “in the early sixties became a civil-rights war that engulfed the South for the rest of the decade—and it happened without e-mail, texting, Facebook, or Twitter” (Gladwell 134). We have the power to change the world with technology, but we have neglected that power. Instead we have chosen to abuse it and put it in a negative light. The knowledge that we have and the knowledge that we could potentially gain from the technological world could in fact benefit us in the the creation of positive possible
We have to live our lives to truly understand how the world around us works. We are able to make advances in our world and “its because we know about this world that we can create possible worlds” (Gopnik 181). The technological advances in this world could help create possible worlds if we used our technology the proper way. But, due to the way we have been using social media, it has only hurt our possible world creation. It has been proven that events prior to the use of social media have bettered our lives. Events that took police “in the early sixties became a civil-rights war that engulfed the South for the rest of the decade—and it happened without e-mail, texting, Facebook, or Twitter” (Gladwell 134). We have the power to change the world with technology, but we have neglected that power. Instead we have chosen to abuse it and put it in a negative light. The knowledge that we have and the knowledge that we could potentially gain from the technological world could in fact benefit us in the the creation of positive possible