The Brave New World of Digital Intimacy

The main argument of the text "Brave New World of Digital Intimacy" is about how social media websites like Facebook can allow us to carry on more relationships with people. It can also help us increase our "Dunbar number". The ties that social media can make are in between weak and strong ties. Mark Zuckerberg introduced the news feed to modernize Facebook, so that people could easily see the changes in their friend’s page. Adding a news feed cuts down the amount of time a person would waste examining each friend's page, checking if anything had changed or been updated. Before the news feed users had the ability to spend more time searching for information of Facebook, after the news feed it gave the user no reason to spend extra time looking for information, it was just there. The article refers to "ambient awareness" as very similar to being able to pick up on someone’s moods through body language. "Ambient awareness" can cause us to communicate with people in real life because you feel like you know everything that’s going on from social media. According to Thompson people in their 20's feel pressured to stay connected on Facebook because the majority of their age group is on their and they have to monitor what people tag them in and say about them. This article defines literacy as the ability to use social media in the right ways.