Lorsque l’on m’a conseillé cet ouvrage, je n’avais pas réalisé qu’il était écrit pour un lectorat féminin. Et je crois que c’est exactement la perspective qu’il fallait que je lise pour finir de précipiter certaines idées.
Notes
p. 9-10 :
Tellingly, many of the adverse effects of social media use appear to be inherently gendered. Women make up the majority of audiences across all the visual platforms, notably Instagram and Pinterest, as well as Facebook and Twitter. They also post the most selfies, share more personal issues, log on more frequently and spend more time on social media overall. In the US, women use social media more than men—by a gap of 73 to 65 per cent. As Dr James A Robert, a professor of marketing and an expert on consumer and technology behaviours, explains: “Woman form deeper attachments to their devices than men. They score higher on the behavioural addiction scale, and we’ve found that’s down to the reasons that women use smartphones—unlike men who are still in the main using their phones for traditional purposes like communication, information and entertainment—women often focus their use of technology on maintaining social relationships through social media”.
De la tyrannie de la mise en scène permanente. Le mannequin (dont la mise en scène est évidente) n’est pas un modèle, la voisine (dont la mise en scène est subie) peut le devenir, p. 21 :
According to a 2017 research paper, these days women rarely compare their appearances to women they see in billboards and magazines and only sometimes compare their appearance to other they see on TV. Instead it’s social media comparisons which are making women feel unhappiest. Because these women are supposedly more accessible and “normal”—not A-list actresses or internationally famous pop stars—the standards they set feel like a bare minimum. If those in your community most like you can achieve a level of life success and perfect appearance, why can’t you too? And through these platforms we’re also all looking up to new heroes. The status of these new “micro-celebrities” is key to the social media system. Super-users by nature, these “influencers” have the faces, bodies and wardrobes that we pore over as avatars of the new area.
Le réseau social comme ghetto — choix conscient, ou est-ce que les outils offerts par tel ou tel réseau facilitent/entravent leur appropriation par telle ou telle communauté ? p. 25 :
On any social platform you will find groups which celebrate, inform and serve plus-size women, LGBT women, women of colour and women of faith. All shapes, all sizes, all shades and all creeds are welcome to join in. From a racial perspective, the proportion of white, black and Latino users across all social media sites is roughly the same, although more black and Latino people use Instagram in comparison to their white counterparts, while Pinterest is more popular among white users than other groups.
Et dire que certains croient encore dans une pseudo-singularité qui se nourrirait des personae sociales, p. 49-50 :
Cynthia Johnson, a personal branding specialist, says that it’s virtually impossible to reflect an entirely accurate version of yourself online. “In the digital age, we have to consider the technology that can lead to miscommunication and misunderstanding about who we are and what we want”. Feeling anxiety around other people’s perceptions of us in entirely understandable, but more often than not it’s something that is out of your control. And that’s worth keeping in mind, whether you’re on- or offline.
Pseudologia instagramia, p. 63-64 :
One issue is that the use of these apps is creating unrealistic “memories“ of your own face and body. The images stored on your phones never actually happened. You never had thighs that slim or skin that glowing—but it can be easy to start believing that once upon a time you were that “perfect”. This leads to a world where young women are holding themselves up to scrutiny not just against the images that other people have edited and posted, but also against the images of themselves which they have edited. In this context, it’s no wonder that the consumption of these visuals can make women feel overweight and unattractive: the mirror can never compete. “Social media has made us want to look like other people—but those people don’t even look like that,” influencer and mental health campaigner Roxie Nafousi says. “What we’re lusting over is so blurred and edited and, even though we know that to an extent, it can still distort our frame of reference.”
p. 95 :
Aside from how they look and who they’re friends with, millennials are struggling with the demands to achieve perfect grades, secure perfect jobs and nail down their life partner at an increasingly earlier age. Not to have achieved all these goals by certain stages of their life is often treated as a catastrophe. Through consuming information about each other digitally, the pressure to conform to increasingly normative and restrictive targets—the idea that there is only one very narrow path to success: great jobs, nice home, six-pack, hot partner—is creating a collective sense of inadequacy.
La corrélation n’est pas la causalité, mais…, p. 98 :
Over social media’s lifetime in the UK there’s been a rise of self-poisoning by girls of 50 per cent, an increase in hospital admissions for self-harm among girls by 68 per cent, and a 400 per cent increase in girls being treated in hospital for cutting themselves. Over the same period there hasn’t been the same spike in difficulties for boys.
Où je ne me sens absolument pas « millénnial », p. 123-124 :
Over the ensuing 20 years, I’ve learned to be more diplomatic, but those youthful experiences have certainly impacted the way I prefer to communicate with friends today. One of the big attractions of conversing via mediated technology—whether it’s text, email or social media—is that you have the power to review and edit your words until you get them “just so”, something I find hugely comforting. I’m actually also massively telephobic (talking-on-the-phone-averse). However, like most millennials, I’m entirely at ease emailing anyone to ask for anything and feel both articulate and confident communicating via the written word. WhatsApp is an entirely stress-free environment for me. In fact, everything about communicating via technology appeals, whereas a lot of face-to-face interaction—especially anything awkward or potentially aggressive—brings me out in a cold sweat. […] Of course, there are potential drawbacks to digital communications—the fact that everything you say is “on record” adds a sense of pressure and the threat of cyberbullying is rife. But in general, digital communication allows us to sterilize our relationships and avoid the challenge of looking someone in the eye when having to say things which feel tricky. Avoidance is part and parcel of the way we connect today.
Et pourtant, je n’arrive pas à croire que la solution réside dans un arsenal juridique spécifique, p. 208 :
Free speech has always taken precedence over our safety, and from their very beginnings, nearly all the platforms decided to ignore the ticking time bomb of digital hate. From a legal perspective, the only areas of corporate accountability are focused on hosting child pornography and copyright infringement, and the laws established in the social media salad days are woefully limited. These sites don’t have to dear begin sued for nearly anything their consumer use their services for—even if they were to, say, share footage of mass murder or rape. As far as criminal law against an individual is concerned, a social media comment must contain a credible threat of violence, breach of court order or constitute stalking or harassment in order to be deemed unlawful and subject to prosecution. Which leaves a vast latitude for the worst of human behaviour to thrive, multiply and disseminate without any liability. Permanently attuned to potential offence, some social media users seem poised at all times to pounce and unleash vitriol.
Le « défi Greta », p. 218 :
There’s no point saying something for the sake of saying something; wokeness as a posture does nothing to enact change. We’ve all seen how social media outcries have been followed with inaction and inertia—to really alter our realities, whether politically, socially or culturally, opinion needs to be galvanized into action, and that’s something that can’t be achieved through social media alone.