Analysis of "The Loneliness of the Interconnected"

            In “The Loneliness of the Interconnected”, Charles Seife criticizes how the world communicates information and slams ideas down others throat to believe through social media and news outlets. He seems to paint a picture of people with their heads cut off, blindly blurting whatever comes to mind on social media and expecting others to fully support it. If they do support it, we think of those people as sensible and smart individuals. If they choose not to believe it, we think of them as fools who cannot understand basic facts. For example, about 20 years ago, one medical researcher fabricated facts that said that vaccinating your children will increase their chances of developing autism. When parents began to read this report, some refused to vaccinate their children, hoping that the parents who did vaccinate would prevent disease from infecting their unvaccinated children. Even when the researcher admitted that he had lied about his report only ten years later, parents still refused to vaccinate their children. This has resulted in hundreds of unnecessary deaths from diseases that were defeated decades before. All because of lies that people still chose to follow. While Seife continues to harshly criticize how the internet and news outlets have ruined our thought process, he fails to mention how important these sources can be in raising awareness for things or events that aren’t even close to us. People are able to be informed on injustices and catastrophe that are happening halfway across the world like wars, famines, and natural disasters. In an instant we are able to donate money to the cause and share this information with countless others in our community or in our friend circle. We seek to find people who have the same beliefs as us, to makes us feel like we belong. However, we need people who oppose us and our beliefs, for if everything is one sided, our views will become stronger and more extreme like Seife says in the excerpt. With different beliefs comes different ideas which makes our society more diverse as a whole.