Is Social Networking Destroying America?

Reading through the "Discourse on the Origin of Equality", I was a little fuzzy on the ideas that Rousseau was trying to present. However, in lecture on Monday, it became clear to me when Professor LaVaque-Manty proceeded to dance in front of the class to the recently famous Gangnam Style.

To recap what went on during lecture on Monday, Professor LaVaque-Manty used dancing to demonstrate Rousseau's main principles in the "Discourse". He went over what it means to gain respect and truly be happy. The foundation of these two is comparative self-love (self-esteem). This self-esteem branches from taking chances and feeling good and free, which he demonstrated by dancing. Prof. Lavaque-Manty related this to Rousseau's theory of emergence from property. Rousseau  states that people try to obtain as much property as they can to gain respect, build their self-esteem, and feel better than everyone else. Rousseau developed his social contract of inequality between men to tell us how awful our happiness has become.

Rousseau tells us that we have been trying too hard to perfect our reputation and because of this, our true happiness has been lost. He also argues that we now determine happiness by what other's think of us, and that's when it hit me. We have began to have an extreme reliance on social networking as a mean of happiness. We constantly fear being judged and compared to others. Therefore, we feel the need to continuously post pretty pictures, make funny statuses, and tell everyone in the world what were doing at that exact moment. We now communicate through Facebook, twitter, snapchat, etc. Because of these means of communication, friendship is beginning to lose its meaning. Americans are beginning to judges how popular they are based on how many friends they have on Facebook or how many likes they get on an Instagram picture. Take a look at this commercial that explains this concept perfectly.

The parents of the girl in the commercial have the right idea of happiness (they must've read Rousseau's Doctrine). In this instance, the parents are being free and feeling happy. However, the younger generation depicts "living" as living through the Internet, and in my view the commercial has the right opinion. These social network addicts dig into other's lives because they may feel the need to make up for their own boring life. Social Networking has allowed us to have confidence in the virtual world, but has destroyed our confidence in the real world. Our reliance is so strong on social networking that we would go mad if we didn't have Twitter or Facebook for a week. The list of negative effects from social networking can go on and on. If Rousseau were alive today, he would be absolutely furious of how we have attempted to obtain happiness by social networking.

Social networking can work against someone or for them. For example, Facebook could help you find an interview for that top-rated job, however, when the employer looks through your Facebook page and finds inappropriate statuses he won't hire you. There's no question that social networking has multiple positive effects, however; the negative effects are beginning to outweigh the positive effects. So I have a challenge for you. Instead of spending an hour looking through pointless photos on Facebook that you won't remember in a week, go out and experience the world.

Happiness shouldn't come from how much money or property you have. Nor should it come from your self-confidence in the virtual world. True happiness will occur when you gain respect for yourself and surround yourself with people that respect you for who you are.