[JulianMorrison]

Since ancient times it's been fashionable to diss the newest media. "This invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory" -- Socrates, on writing. Facebook, as a synecdoche for "how the hoi polloi use the internet" is just another example of this. The reality is that my Facebook is a news feed tailored to my interests and reflecting what's happening to the people I care about and as such it's useful.

[rtl49]

Socrates wasn't wrong. The adoption of new media should reflect a rational analysis of its benefits and drawbacks.

Writing enables us to store, transmit, and reflect upon information in ways that surpass speech. One negative consequence is that we get less practice in exercising memory, and we encounter more information than we could commit to memory in any case.

Social media enables us to get current information on the doings of people whose lives interest us. One negative consequence is that the information users encounter is subject to manipulation by those who dictate the content of the website, with the result that most users have reduced intellectual autonomy. What's more, much of the information presented is not relevant to users, which wastes much of the finite attention they possess. Data collected about users can be and is used to advance interests contrary to their own. Some of these issues are intrinsic to social media as a concept, others specific to the platforms that currently dominate.

Either way, it cannot reasonably be presumed that those opposed to the use of social media are simply Luddites.

[peteretep]

Can you cite that exposure to written material has a negative impact on memory? It seems like an extraordinary claim.

[JulianMorrison]

One way to test it: there are significant numbers of muslims who as a matter of religious practise, fully commit the Quran to memory for recitation, this is one of the few modern traditions to use the old style of word-perfect oral memory. And there are plenty of "control" muslims from essentially the same backgrounds who don't bother. Comparing them might be interesting.

[rtl49]

It isn't exposure to writing in itself that reduces remembering, but the difference in how literate people tend to behave, by relying more on "external storage" than their own memories. I first became aware of this possibility when I took a class in translating Homeric epic poetry, much of which has been shaped by its origin as an oral tradition. (For instance, it has been speculated that the many repetitive phrases the Homeric epics are aids to memory -- 'the swift-footed Achilles,' etc.)

It's well established that remembering is to some extent a skill. You can find sources with a cursory search. If you're interested in a longer treatment of the subject, "Moonwalking with Einstein" by a journalist named Josh Foer, who managed to win the largest memory competition in the US using mnemonics, is well worth the read.

[CPLX]

How do we know that Socrates said that?

[wstrange]

He posted it on his wall

[drzaiusapelord]

Facebook requires my real name and pesters me for private information that can be used against me in a variety of ways (harassment, phishing, discrimination, etc). Posts on my feed can also hurt me if a potential employer doesn't like things I say or reveal. In the past, this wasn't a problem. In fact, FB is mostly liabilities if we consider the narrow range of things that are socially acceptable, especially to business culture.

My social identity not only has value but is also extremely fragile and can open me up to liabilities if it isn't curated properly. This is just exhausting. We are willfully handing over this valuable thing to FB for free. I don't think we can just dismiss this or compare it to old media.

Personally, I think we've reached the point where most people are starting to understand this. FB, past one's teen/college years, becomes a 'vacation and baby pics' only type thing. People know this information can be used against them and don't post anything that could be used against them. There's even a name for this "Real job radio silence."

On top of that, we're starting to see research that reveals social media anxiety. That's very different than picking up a copy of the New York Times or watching TV.

[deathcakes]

Minor nitpick - hoi polloi means the masses/people so the additional 'the' is redundant.

On your actual comment though, I feel I have to disagree; at least based on anecdotal evidence from people I know who use Facebook. It is a news feed if you count news as being only what people you know are talking about, which to me sort of misses the point of the internet. Surely you want to know about stuff that everyone else is talking about?

This wouldn't be a huge issue if people generally made the effort to seek out other things, but I find that this isn't the case.

Anyway, yeah, anecdotal and based on feeling rather than fact so feel free to discount.

[kolbe]

I'm pretty sure writing had existed for millennia by the time Plato came around. And Plato knew that, so I have my doubts that you cited this quote with proper context.

[beedogs]

Facebook's hardly "the newest media". Great grandparents are using it. It's become as mundane as the telephone, and with its neverending autoplaying videos, as inane as television.

[JulianMorrison]

If your Facebook feed is full of inane autoplaying videos, consider using the many provided tools to prune it - you can unfollow people and pages, tell FB you want to see less posts of a particular type, and opt out of posts from particularly spammy websites no matter who posts them.

[andrepd]

I find that quote very hard to belive. Writing had been developed for millenia before Socrates' time.