Part Two: How to Live and Love Online

Nev also discusses how to use the internet in a more positive and fulfilling manner.  He states that you should use social media as a way to share photos and stay in touch with people you know and love, such as people you admire or your friends. It is also ok to express your opinions and feelings within reason of over exposure and mindfulness to others (Schulman, 2014).  In other words, to use the internet as a third space.  Watkins describes a third place as a great variety of public places that host the regular, voluntary, informal, and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals beyond the realms of home and work.  In the past this was seen as bars or cafes, but today we see this move towards the Internet and social media. People of all ages frequent these places to find people, conversation, and activities to make us feel connected (Watkins, 2009).  By using the internet and it’s tools to help communicate with others we know, for leisure, we can see the positive effects of the network society at work.

When looking to these online social networking sites, we tend to see a connection between the people whom we are “friends” with.  Even in real life, we connect with people who are homoplilous to us.  Ramesh Srinivasan reflects on this idea in "Bridges Between Cultural and Digital Worlds in Revolutionary Egypt," by saying “I realized that those I was connected to via digital networks were homophilous- similar to me educationally, professionally, and to some extent politically” (Srinivasan, 2013). This tendency of individuals to associate and bond with similar others, can be taken from real life into the digital world, as third places did.  If you look at a persons facebook friends, twitter followers, or instagram followers, you can see connections through similar interests.  This can be seen positively, through connecting people to discuss, debate, and meet others, or negatively, allowing catfish to see what you like in order to lure you into their trap. 

S. Craig Watkins, "The very well connected: Friending, bonding, and community in the digital age," The Young and the Digital (2009).  

Ramesh Srinivasan, "Bridges between cultural and digital worlds in Revoltionary Egypt," The Information Society 29 (2013), 49-60.