We’re Addicted to Self-Perpetuating Loneliness

A friend of mine recently posted a link to an interesting video on Facebook about the effects of Facebook and other forms of social media on the brain. The video was originally posted by Cam Lincoln on mobiledia.com, and in it he describes a phenomenon we’ve all come to subconsciously realize: “I share, therefore I am.”

As we become more and more intimate with our technology and social media platforms, it’s important we realize the things that seem to connect us are also making us lonely.

On the internet, we get to create our best selves. We spend hours crafting and editing tweets, status updates and even text messages. We can choose which Instagram filter best suits a photo and the Facebook profile picture that makes us look the best. The cost of this excessive preoccupation with creating our best selves is a connection to reality.

In a study done by the International Center for Media & the Public Agenda, college students reported feeling addicted to social media such as Facebook and even facing anxiety and depression when asked to refrain from using them. When it comes time to face reality, we’re more inclined to immerse ourselves in a world of virtual friends and perfect images, leaving us with less time to experience real life.

But we don’t get to edit real-time conversations, and we can’t go back and touch ourselves up in everyday interactions with other people. There’s an unhealthy obsession with creating and selling a false image, even if we just think it’ll make us appear more interesting. Our addiction is to the instant gratification, the validation we think we’re getting when we get “likes” on a picture.

Margie Warrell a blogger for The Huffington Post calls this being seduced by social media.

“They seduce us with the implicit promise that, if we get enough friends or followers or likes, we will feel truly significant in the world,” Warrell writes. And many are falling prey to this promise.

According to thenextweb.com, Facebook has 1.19 billion monthly users and 728 million daily users. More and more people are connecting with each other, but what value do these connections actually hold?

Lincoln’s video suggests that a human cannot physically and emotionally connect with more than 150 people on an intimate level, but last time I checked, my friend count was two or three times that. Intimacy is a natural part of being human, but Facebook only offers the illusion of such connections.

Our hunger for more friends and more connections draws us to sites like Facebook, but reality suggests that more virtual friends, rather than real life relationships, really aren’t the key to relieving us of our loneliness. When we add friends on Facebook, especially friends we don’t even know well in real life, we’re not seeing their profile as an honest picture of who they are.

A Facebook profile offers a limited, edited version of a persona that the person has created. And yet, we revert to Facebook time and time again to learn more about people, to get glimpses into their “personal” lives that often misrepresent who they actually are. We get hung up on details about a person’s life without realizing that we’re never privy to the whole story.

It’s the conviction that what we’re getting on Facebook is real that drives our sense of loneliness. Studies have shown that people who use Facebook more tend to be more depressed afterwards because they feel inadequate compared to their friends. On the same note, people may feel lonelier even with so many connections because they realize there’s nothing truly worthwhile or real about the friendships they only maintain through Facebook.

Internet profiles and personas may make us feel interesting and get us more likes, but they don’t establish emotional connections or lasting intimate relationships between people. We’re making ourselves lonelier by continuing to believe that real relationships can come from a simple “add friend” button and that we can really know someone just by what they post online.

The Resume is Dead-Make a Better Impact with a Bio

With the rapid shift to digitize just about everything, from college applications to coursework, it’s about time to update the well-worn and seemingly trite résumé.

The résumé is often replaced by something we’re familiar with in the age of social media: the bio. Much more attention-grabbing than the simple facts on a résumé, the bio is to employers what the personal statement is to a college admissions office. It allows employers to know exactly who they’re hiring by giving them a brief insight into your personality.

Résumés just list off qualifications: Previous experience, suitable references and usually vague descriptions of personal traits one desperately hopes an employer will appreciate buried somewhere in there. I’d rather not count the number of times I’ve included organized and self-motivated on my list of skills. To employers looking for the optimal candidate for a position, those words are completely empty.

Boring résumés usually get buried in a rejection stack, so how does a bio really make you stand out? Thanks to sites like LinkedIn and Readyforce, it’s incredibly easy for college grads to make connections with potential employers looking for creative, innovative people.

LinkedIn makes it easy to upload employment history, qualifications and testimonials from colleagues, clients and employers. Snappy bios make you stand out to employers browsing your page, and a well-rounded LinkedIn profile can give you a competitive edge. According to bluebugle.org, Commpro, a marketing and communications company found that 98 percent of employers use LinkedIn, and an average recruiter has about 600 connections.

Meanwhile, with Readyforce, grads can use social media to their advantage: Video clips and personal statements are tangible examples of the work they can accomplish for their future employers. Instead of a résumé, social media compiles all of your skills into a single, easy-to-navigate page that’s vastly more interesting. By building your profile to highlight your specific qualifications and showcase your accomplishments and connections, it becomes far easier to show yourself off to companies who might overlook your talents otherwise.

In January 2013, Vala Afshar, the CMO and Chief Customary Officer of wireless networking provider Enterasays Networking, tweeted that he would be hiring a new social marketer. The caveat? No paper résumés. The social marketer would be hired via Twitter and receive a six-figure salary. And that’s just one way employers and applicants can come together to size each other up; there are also sites dedicated to showcasing the technical skills of applicants, especially for computer science majors looking to show off their coding ability.

 

One of these, Readyforce’s new site called HackerHub, facilitates hackathons, mass programming events where students test their problem-solving knowledge and collaborate with one another, and publishes amateur-created open-source content.

Obviously HackerHub isn’t for everyone, but the bio certainly is. In the same way HackerHub showcases raw ability, the bio is the perfect digital alternative to anything you could include in a résumé.

According to techcrunch.com, Readyforce has employed interviewers to do webcam conversations with applicants to construct 20-minute videos that can be edited down to three minutes of highlights that exhibit knowledge, articulation and how hireable you are. Potential employers are not going to spend massive amounts of time trying to work out what the phrase “team-oriented” or “able to achieve goals” mean, but a short clip of you discussing your passions, ideas and personal goals might be that extra information that gets you hired.

There’s a vast new hiring frontier for both employers and applicants to bypass generic hiring techniques. Specific qualifications showcased by the application of skills and presentation of the applicant’s personality are eliminating the need for facts listed out on paper. It’s time to set ourselves apart from the stack and utilize the full potential of social media. The online bio provides us with greater opportunity to make ourselves desirable to future employers, so down with the résumé once and for all.

Women in STEM: Grades Don’t Define your Value, I Promise

I’ve always known I wanted to be a STEM major, no questions asked. What’s surprising to me, though, is how few women seem to share my absolutism when it comes to pursuing degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

According to a study by Georgetown University, only 31 percent of computer and math majors are women, and only 16 percent of engineering majors are women.

There has to be a reason for such dismal numbers. One theory taking hold is that it’s the fear of failure or the difficulty of attaining a 4.0 GPA that leads few women to complete STEM programs. Whatever the case, the leaky pipeline of women falling out of high-demand and lucrative degree options needs to stop.

I’ll be honest, it wasn’t until I came to college that I got my first C, which also led to my first existential crisis about the trajectory of my life — both as a woman and as an aspiring scientist. The C was in calculus, one of the fundamental courses for my major, which made it even worse.

However, this discouraging feeling is apparently commonplace for women in STEM fields. Catherine Rampell ofThe Washington Post recently wrote an article about how women are less likely to continue pursuing degrees inSTEM subjects if they receives lower grades than the As they want.

According to Rampell, women are afraid of performing imperfectly in a field that has one of the worst reputations for awarding As. Rather than sticking it out, women tend to shy away from classes in which Bs or even Cs are the highest-awarded grades because they equate As with success and anything lower with failure. Interestingly enough, men tend to share fewer of these reservations.

Neither Rampell nor her interviewees know exactly where this male-female difference comes from, especially because women are usually just as prepared as men to enter STEM fields. Women are also often more eager to study in those fields than their male counterparts.

 

Yes, it was tough earning a C for the first time and of course I thought about completely changing my career path because of it, but where’s the fun in that?

It shouldn’t feel less acceptable for a woman to earn a C in a difficult course when she’s doing just as well as the other students. But women in STEM feel like they have something to prove because of their gender, not realizing that a (very difficult to obtain) perfect GPA isn’t the only measure of success.

Women tend to excel in higher education. In an article for Slate, Amanda Hess reminds us that women have earned 10 million more degrees than men since 1982. Hard work really does pay off, including in the fields that intimidate us the most.

If the prospect of kicking major ass in male-centric STEM fields isn’t enough motivation to overcome the very real fear of failure, consider the post-graduate opportunities for women with such degrees.

The Georgetown University study also found that all 10 of the top-earning majors in America are related to STEM, and the median earnings per year start at $80,000. What’s more, nine out of 10 of the top-earning majors for women are also STEM fields, the 10th being business economics.

STEM fields are grueling, time-consuming and challenging to break into, and yet these don’t really seem to be the determining factors behind women dropping out.

Graduating with a STEM degree is an accomplishment in and of itself, yet women feel pressured to graduate with not only a degree, but also perfect grades, before they consider themselves successful. This perception just doesn’t work — opt into the challenge, don’t drop out from the pressure.

It’s not necessary for women to be scared away from STEM because of a need to be perfect or fear of failure. STEMfields offer some of the highest earning potentials in the business sector, along with opportunities to participate in cutting-edge research and development. Yes, the courses are difficult and can feel unrewarding on the grade scale, but success does not amount to a 4.0.

In STEM, the work does not end after graduation — these fields have a reputation for being challenging for good reason. However, unless there are women already there to set the example, this generation of aspiring STEMwomen will not be able to realize that perfection isn’t everything.