Fifteen years ago, Social Media barely existed. Today, it occupies a large portion of the lives of a few billion people plus. For many people, everything about themselves is now tangled up in the loose cluster of events known as Web 2.0. These include but not limited to their relations to other people, their political commitments, and their sexuality as well as their basic livelihoods. At some point, most of us were observers online. Now we are immensely immersed in social media and everything it offers.
These books unmask social media by tracing the development of Social Media over the last decade and the impact it has had on our lives. Social media can make you productive and successful but on the other hand, has the capacity to cause harm to you. One book states how social media alerts are geared to perpetuate addictive and depressive cycles of engagement. We constantly check our devices for every notification bell or bubble. Then there is the desire to think of oneself as a micro-celebrity, with a personal brand that constantly needs to be maintained. This desire poisons private life. Trolling on various social media platforms, posting fake news and information all bring out the undesirable side.
In all, these books will open your mind and if you have never thought of quitting Socia Media, you will think about it before you end.
- Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino
- The Twittering Machine by Richard Seymour
- The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff
- The Circle by Dave Eggers
- Tweets and the Streets by Paolo Gerbaudo
- Â Crudo by Olivia Laing
- Sympathy by Olivia Sudjic
- Taipei by Tao Lin
- Platform Capitalism by Nick Srnicek
- The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich
