Even as the methods of communicating are drastically changing with the evolution of the internet, email, text messaging, and especially and social networking sites, so also it the nature, or quality, of communication. Conversations are staggered and shortened, frequently interrupted by updates or other messages or tweets. In my experience, when carried on digitally, conversations are, by nature, abrupt, and compete for attention. In fact, even face-to-face conversations are interrupted by the constant pings, dings, and chirps of rival conversations with non-persons reposting the most trivial of non-information. My least favorite word this past year is “meme”. If you’ve got something to say to me, please say it. Please do not share someone else’s “less-than-a-thought” with me because you can’t think of your own words to say.

Perhaps all of that is a little harsh. I’m sure it’s age and attention-span related. I’m on the older end of technology users. I come from an era where words have meanings and are used to communicate real thought and feelings.

I find myself retreating farther and farther away from social media as the years pass. After examining my position through the lenses of utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics, I find that there are elements of each of the three frameworks in my stance. I find more negative experiences on social media sites than positive, so, as a utilitarian, I limit time spent checking on my profiles and those of my friends and family. I value my right to privacy, rarely sharing anything publicly, never clicking on ads, seldom reposting anything—ever, and avoiding clicking on anything that I don’t want the data-collectors to associate with me as a person, my identity, my self. From a deonlologist standpoint, social media is not prudent. But most importantly, from a virtue ethics standpoint, social networking sites are not the venue for cultivating real relationships, that is, relationships that lead to eudaimonia for all parties. Shannon Vallor’s gaze, the gaze of Sartre,

The gaze of the morally significant other, which holds me respectfully in place and solicits my ongoing patience, is a critical element in my moral development; though I might for all that ignore it, it creates an important situational gradient in the virtuous direction. (2009:166) (Ess 130)

Simply put, how can real relationships develop without the intimacy of human connection?