With new emerging forms of social media, a person can find themselves being able to engineer their lives through a digital lens. They can structure the way in which someone see them through what they choose to post, or completely remain anonymous and post whatever they may feel. Digital communities such as Second Life incorporated the ability for people to live out an entirely different life online. This opened the eyes to many of the way the digital world can incorporate itself into our own while remaining separate.
(Wikipedia)
This “virtuality” changes the idea of what is the real world, and allows for more interpretation and ability to access new “lives”, much like what second life does. It gives the user an opportunity to leave this “real world”, and do something else, even be someone else. What this does is makes new societies, communities and identities. Ones people can use differently than their real world ones.
VR has potential to affect our relationships with who we are now. It allows for another life to take place, another community to form and so on. This could be dangerous for some, who choose to escape from their real life for something else that they can engineer, putting other relationships at risk. This idea of VR social media could affect many societies in that people are disconnected due to other connections in “other worlds”.
(G2 Learning Hub)
What I like about social media is the way to hear about what my friends are up to. I want to see their experiences. But what I think is most important to me is that I already have an existing “real life” relationship with the user. I just use the digital technology to access their experiences that they choose to share. My perfect social media would be one without anonymity, much like Instagram where real people can share their real experiences.
My concerns for virtual life is the loss of people experiencing what the real world has to offer. I am talking about earth. Virtual life can take us to anywhere we could possibly imagine, but I don’t think it could ever replace the real feeling of visiting a location like Yellowstone National Park. The pictures do not do it justice, the actual personal experience shared with a location or person is much more important in my opinion. I am afraid we may lose this with too much virtual reality driven pieces of technology.
(The Chronicle of Higher Education)
But I do see lots of benefits as well, and this comes from a scientific standpoint. As someone who wants to become a doctor, this technology would greatly improve the practice. This would allow surgeons and other professionals a different looks at healing the body.