Personal Connections in the Digital Age

Nancy Baym discusses and compares our world today to the old world in Personal Connections in the Digital Age. She addresses the issue that many people are aware of, technology is taking us away from real life interactions.  However, she raises important points and questions that I have never once thought about. Baym talks about our relationships with others and how technology and media affect our relations, she brings up this idea of “familiar becomes the unfamiliar”. When new technology rises or new form of social media become more popular we become unfamiliar with the new forms, which can often times lead to anxiety. This point caught my attention because I never thought about anxiety being related to technology, however, now I can. Feeling a sense of anxiousness because of technology makes total sense, due to the high demands and obsession with it.

            Baym brings up this notion of being present yet also absent. Physically you can be somewhere but your mind can be absent because we are so infatuated with other things rather than what is going on now. This point is something I believe everyone is aware of, yet they don’t seem to stop.  Over the summer while waitressing I had a table full of young kids who I assumed to be in high school. While serving the group of people every one of them had their cell phone in hand, it made it difficult to do my job because while they were physically there, their minds were absent.

            Baym raises many questions throughout her book that made me think. One of them being, “how can we have so much control yet lose so much freedom?” This was something I had never thought about, but I thought deeper into this. All the different technologies and social media provide us with so many opportunities to access information, provide information, and communicate with people all over the world. However, we lose freedom because being so obsessed with technology and media we allow ourselves to miss certain things and we become more vulnerable. While social media is a great way to communicate with others it also causes issues and often times lead people into trouble, thus taking away our freedom. Something I think people often times forget is once something is posted online it can never go away, even if it is deleted. As I grow older and become involved more social media is something I have to take into consideration. Time and time again I have been told to watch what I post because future employers can look me up, being on a collegiate sports team is also something I have to be careful of. Nancy Baym raises important issues that I believe everyone should look into, to have a better sense of technology and social media.