Social Media In Peggy Orenstein's The Way We Live Now

Since 1997, people have been using social media, however, it became a trend around 2003 to 2005. Nowadays, different forms of social media are incorporated into the millennial generation and their lives are preoccupied with it. In Peggy Orenstein’s “The Way We Live Now: I Tweet, Therefore I Am,” she asserts social media has overtaken people’s lives through personal and social reality. Orenstein speculates social media wastes people’s time, causes people to be unable to identify between their personal and private lives, and ruins relationships. Orenstein commences her article regarding a morning with her daughter and finds herself thinking about sharing the moment on Twitter. She is relatively “late to Twitter” nonetheless her publisher coerced
“When every thought is externalized, what becomes of insight? When we reflexively post each feeling, what becomes of reflection? When friends become fans, what happens to intimacy?” (348). Orenstein has a strong argument, when we share every moment for the world to glimpse at, it strips away your personal identity. People lose their own sense of humanity and how they treat others in real life. It is analogous to the saying where people become objects and objects become people. Everyone loves the wrong object and treats others in the wrong way. A study by the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan concluded that people have lost empathy, especially after the beginning of social media. Orenstein states, “Social media may not have instigated that trend, but by encouraging self-promotion over self-awareness, they may well be accelerating it” (348). The destruction of relationships will worsen as time goes on since people are slowly losing humanity traits, such as empathy, due to people being engrossed in social