Write a 5 pages paper on how are social media platforms redefining and revaluing the ties that bind us together.

Write a 5 pages paper on how are social media platforms redefining and revaluing the ties that bind us together. Sherry Turkle from her book, Alone together reveals how we expect more from technology and less from each other thus explaining the various ways, social media affect the ties between people. The author elaborates on our lives on the digital terrain. Technology has presented itself as the designer of our relationships which is now a substitution of the reality of life that offers to meet our human vulnerabilities in the comfort of our homes, workplaces, or anywhere we can be able to access the internet. She describes new, unsettling relationships between friends, parents, children, and lovers, and new instabilities in the way we understand intimacy, privacy, and solitude. The digital connection has given us the chance to do anything from anywhere but it has drained us since it makes us feel overwhelmed and depleted by the lives that technology makes possible. For instance, we could work from anywhere, but we are prone to being lonely. In a surprising twist, we turn to technology to fill the void. The author shows the emotional dislocation, resulting in risks that are taken unknowingly. However, it also shows how some people get hope in the places where digital saturation is greatest, where disappointments are alleviated by minimizing direct human connection. She reveals that the networked existence may be breeding communal as well as self-alienation amidst all its face-value of splendor and innovation.

According to, Sherry Turkle, “Digital connections and the sociable robot may offer the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship (Turkle, 263). In her article, she reveals the fact, that it is easier to do nothing and say you are friends than participate in the life of another person. She describes the “fake friendship” in the following way: “Digital connections and the sociable robot may offer the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship. Our networked life allows us to hide from each other, even as we are tethered to each other” (Turkle, Sherry, 2011, 264). In analyzing this quotation, it is important to mention the notion of “circumstantial friendship”.