Social media and technological advances have been advancing in ways that we could have never imagined twenty years ago. From phones being wired and connected to the wall to wireless, intact with GPS, and capable of pretty much anything you can think of. Social media has created a world where there are just as many cons as there are pros. For example, social media has created a world where we no longer have to be lonely. Anyone is able to log on and connect with people in their city or someone half across the world. While social media has helped battle loneliness amongst people, it has also caused us to become less social in REAL life.
We are often hiding behind our screens in order to connect causing a high rise in social anxiety amongst younger people. There have been 750 million users on Facebook which is the largest social media site to date. It was noted that on each day, roughly 375 million users log into the site to connect with other users which is over the ENTIRE population of the United States (U.S. Census, 2011). What I want to contribute to this weeks blog is something I came across on CNBC regarding Facebook and a new development that is being worked on.
The new development is known as ‘Metaverse’ which is what Facebook plans to change their name to. This Metaverse will be a virtual world that every user will be able to access. The development came after COVID-19 took its turn on our world and plans to launch within the next decade. The Metaverse will reach ‘over a billion people and be a host of hundreds of billions of dollars in digital commerce’ (Rodriguez, 2021). It will also have jobs for millions of creators and developers. If you have ever put on a virtual reality head set of any kind, it will be similar. Instead a world with REAL people, REAL commerce, REAL jobs… but completely virtual.
There will be animated versions of each Facebook user in which they can take part in this virtually real world. There will be headsets similar to the Oculus Quest VR Set which will sell for $299.00 (Rodriguez, 2021). I am excited to see the role this takes on our world, however I truly feel as if maybe we need to take a back seat on virtual reality worlds and focus on the one we live in already. I see how addicting regular VR sets are for my baby cousins, so to add this feature to our adult world… I believe there should be certain provisions in place such as only being able to be on VR for ‘X’ amount of hours and so on.
References
Rodriguez, S. (2021). Facebook changes company name to Meta. Retrieved from https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/28/facebook-changes-company-name-to-meta.html.
U.S. Census. (2011). U.S. & World Population Clocks. Retrieved from http://
www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html
I was astonished to learn that Facebook was rebranding. Because they are already so large and globally well-recognized, the only reason for rebranding would be to announce a big change. When Mark Zuckerberg announced Metaverse I was surprised once again how powerful a tool was about to be in our world. As with all new technology, this tool will be used both for good and bad and will have unanticipated effects on all of us as humans.
After COVID where almost everyone worked from their homes if possible, face to face interaction is becoming rare. A study by Upwork estimates that by 2025, 22% of the workforce will work remotely (Apollo Technical, 2021). With people behind screens all day at work, watching television & participating in social media, screens take up the majority of our waking hours if not the majority of our lives. You lay out the negative effects this has had already with mental health and I fear what will happen if we dedicate more time in our lives to technology.
Works Cited:
https://www.apollotechnical.com/statistics-on-remote-workers/
I agree with you very much. In the past decade alone, the rapid development of the Internet has brought about changes in many aspects of our social life, but convenience has also brought us many disadvantages. For example, bloggers say that we often just hide behind the screen to socialize, The psychological anxiety of teenagers and many chain reactions caused by this can not be ignored, but this Facebook reform may also herald the reform of the next Internet era. We are likely to visit the network through virtual reality technology, which may enable us to “face-to-face” socialize rather than just the screen, which is undoubtedly a very ideal situation, However, the accompanying problems that may lead to do not exist. Now excessive addiction to the Internet has become a very serious social and psychological problem and has not been solved. If there is a better virtual world than the real world, the possibility of indulging in the virtual world and abandoning the real world is quite high, After all, the virtual happiness of that world will be stronger. Therefore, with the scientific and technological revolution, we have to update the subject. We can’t stick to the concepts we hold now. It is inevitable to keep pace with the times.
Reference
Pantic, I. (2014, October). Online social networking and Mental Health. Cyberpsychology, behavior and social networking. Retrieved November 1, 2021, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4183915/.