Scientific Terminology

TERMINOLOGY 

• Dopamine:

Is an organic chemical of the catecholamine and phenethylamine families that plays several important roles in the brain and body.Most types of rewards increase the level of dopamine in the brain, and many addictive drugs increase dopamine neuronal activity

Cocaine , met amphetamine , ecstasy and other psychostimulant exert their effects primarily or partly by increasing dopamine levels in the brain.Nicotine, cocaine and methamphetamine promote increased levels of dopamine which appear to be the primary factor in causing addiction

• Oxytocin: 
  is a human peptide hormone and neuropeptide.It plays a role in social bonding, sexual reproduction in both sexes, and during and after childbirth.[7] Oxytocin is released into the bloodstream as a hormone.  sometimes referred to as “the cuddle chemical” because it’s released when you kiss or hug.

• Endorphins :
  
  
  The principal function of endorphins is to inhibit the transmission of pain signals; they may also produce a feeling of euphoria very similar to that produced by other opioids. They are produced by thecentral nervous system and the pituitary gland. intended to mean "a morphine-like substance originating from within the body"
  
• Libido: 
  
  Colloquially known as sex drive, is a person's overall sexual drive or desire for sexual activity. Sex drive is influenced by biological, psychological and social factors. Biologically, the sex hormones and associated neurotransmitters that act upon the nucleus accumbens (primarily testosterone and dopamine, respectively) regulate libido in humans. Social factors, such as work and family, and internal psychological factors, like personality and stress, can affect libido. Sex drive can also be affected by medical conditions, medications, lifestyle and relationship issues, and age (e.g., puberty). A person who has extremely frequent or a suddenly increased sex drive may be experiencing hypersexuality, while the opposite condition ishyposexuality.
  
• Psychopathology:
  
  
  is the scientific study of mental disorders, including efforts to understand their genetic, biological, psychological, and social causes; effective classification schemes (nosology); course across all stages of development; manifestations; and treatment. The term may also refer to the manifestation of behaviors that indicate the presence of a mental disorder.
• Sublimation :
  
  
  In psychology, sublimation is a mature type of defense mechanism where socially unacceptable impulses or idealizations are unconsciously transformed into socially acceptable actions or behavior, possibly resulting in a long-term conversion of the initial impulse.
  Sigmund Freud believed that sublimation was a sign of maturity and civilization, allowing people to function normally in culturally acceptable ways. He defined sublimation as the process of deflecting sexual instincts into acts of higher social valuation, being "an especially conspicuous feature of cultural development; it is what makes it possible for higher psychical activities, scientific, artistic or ideological, to play such an important part in civilised life". Wade and Tavris present a similar view, stating that sublimation is when displacement "serves a higher cultural or socially useful purpose, as in the creation of art or inventions".
• Consciousness :
  
   Is the state or quality of awareness, or, of being aware of an external object or something within oneself. It has been defined variously in terms ofsentience, awareness, subjectivity, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood or soul, the fact that there is something "that it is like" to "have" or "be" it, and the executive control system of the mind, or the state or quality of awareness, or, of being aware of an external object or something within oneself. In contemporary philosophy its definition is often hinted at via the logical possibility of its absence, the philosophical zombie, which is defined as a being whose behavior and function are identical to one's own yet there is "no-one in there" experiencing it.
  
• Unconsciousness :
  
  
  is a state which occurs when the ability to maintain anawareness of self and environment is lost. It involves a complete or near-complete lack of responsiveness to people and other environmental stimuli.^[2]
  Loss of consciousness should not be confused with the notion of the psychoanalytic unconscious or cognitive processes (e.g., implicit cognition) that take place outside awareness, and with altered states of consciousness, such as delirium (when the person is confused and only partially responsive to the environment), normal sleep, hypnosis, and other altered states in which the person responds to stimuli.

"The Dark Side of Social Media" Relevant texts

1 - RELEVANT INFORMATION :

In these times of globalisation, speeds have gone up and distances

have become smaller. Technical progress and individualization

have made man more independent and more aloof. […]

Modern man does not seem to be greatly interested in his fellow

humans. Today people are mainly concerned about themselves.

We tend to look away from the other and shut our eyes and ears

to the environment. Sometimes even neighbours are strangers

nowadays. People speak to one another without having a conversation,

look at other people without actually seeing them.

They communicate through fast short messages. Our society is

becoming more and more individualistic. Personal freedom has

become unrelated to solidarity with the community. But without

a certain sense of “togetherness” our existence is becoming

empty. That emptiness cannot be filled by virtual get-togethers;

on the contrary, distances are increasing. The ideal of the liberated

individual has reached its end point. We must try to find a

way back to what unites us. BY Queen Beatrix

2 - FACEBOOK DEPRESSION 

Medical practitioners now observe depression in teenagers

that is not brought on by typical teen angst, but by Facebook.

Researchers coin this symptom “Facebook Depression,” and

teens who experience it are at risk of isolation and depression

and may turn to inappropriate online resources that promote

substance abuse, unsafe sexual practices, or aggressive

or destructive behaviors. Unless parents monitor their child’s

Facebook usage and ensuing behavior, they won’t know their

child is depressed.

Source: Diagnosis: Social Media Syndrome (2011)

3 -ADDICTION IN THE ATTENTION DEFICIT ECONOMY

 Our feelings with regard to social media are best characterized

by ambivalence. This is only natural, for we intensify

our own behavior by means of social media. We may aim to

create as much co-operation as we like, but in many cases

the behavioral intensification ends in a caricature rather

than anything else. As we know, much social media behavior

is not particularly intentional. Most of its manifestations

are outpourings: status updates, feel-goods or feel-bads.

For the most part, social media behavior is letting oneself

be carried along by a gulf stream of new incentives: “social

interaction on top of social communication”, as the English

Wikipedia aptly puts it. This may all too easily evoke a feeling

of inspirational serendipity, and that subjective experience

is a major reason why social media behavior is turning

into social media addiction. In a positive case, that behavior

or addiction intensifies the intended focus and flow, in a

negative case the opposite is true — when it distracts us

from what we should really be occupied with.

4- SOCIAL MEDIA IMAGE 

Because we register everything and do not need to remove it, we

are approaching a turning point where viewing our photos and

reading all the opinions we leave behind on the Internet consume

more time than the life that remains to us. […] We keep

things not because they are memorable moments but because

we do not dare to lose a moment. We are increasingly afraid to

lose our importance if we are not constantly experiencing special

moments and are showing that to others. […] While we are

attempting to find ever-more moments and to store them, we

are changing into spectators of our own lives. We are watching

rather than actually experiencing. […]

The memory becomes more important than the actual experience

of the moment, while we build digital walls around us. The

new human being is no longer the leading actor but a voyeur

in his or her own life. […] Exactly because we are converting

everything into something memorable, each moment becomes

less valuable than the next one. We consistently seek the confirmation

of a moment that is even more beautiful and significant

than the previous one. But if everything becomes equally important,

everything gradually becomes equal to nothing.

We all have multiple identities. And that is not something that

is abnormal. It is just a part of being human. Identity is prismatic.

There are many lenses through which people view you.

We are all multifaceted people. Google and Facebook would

have you believe that you are a mirror. There is one reflection

that you have. […] But in fact we are more like diamonds. You

can look at people from any angle and you can see something

totally different and yet they are still the same.

According to Poole, we have arrived at a crossroads, where

we have to choose how we wish to deal with our online

identity. Should we opt for the path that Facebook and

Google have paved for us, or will we choose 4chan, the

path of anonymity, the path on which nothing is fixed, the

path where chaos rules?

What’s really at stake now is the ability to be creative and

expressive on the Internet. And I especially worry about young

people. Part of growing up is finding out who you are, what you

are passionate about, what you are interested in, being an idiot.

Making mistakes.

Poole is talking about identity and anonymity and about

creativity and expressiveness on the Internet. About being

human. In Poole’s view, if there is no longer anonymity on

the Internet, this will entail the death of creativity.

KEY WORDS

In order to work on my essay , I first consider a good idea to make a list with keyword to help me guide through my essay . According to the articles and information I've collected so far by now,  I started to recognise potential keywords related to my projects. Some of these keyword that I collected has been appearing in multiple text while researching on my essay ,and some of them leaded me to new points of interest that undoublty supported my project.

KEY WORDS

• SOCIAL INTERACTIONS
• MODERN SOCIETY
• SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR
• ETHIC
• MORALS
• VALUES 
• ENDORPHINS
• SOCIAL MEDIA
• NARCISSISM
• LIBIDO
• CHEMICAL REACTION
• VIRTUAL IDENTITY

"Alone Together" Quotes

SHERRY TURKLE

• " We have moved from multitasking to multi- lifing."
  
• " Even a simple cell phone brings us into the world of continual partial attention ".
  
• " Mobile technology has made each of us "pauseable."
  
• " Their stories offer a clear view of how technology reshapes identity because identity is at the center of adolescent life ".
  
• " Now, we have synptoms born of fears of isolation and abandonment."
  
• " Facebook is a world in which fans are "friends." But of course, they are not friends. They have been "friended."
  
• " Alone with your thoughts, yet in contact with an almost tangible fantasy of the other, you feel free to play ".

"Alone Together" Relevant texts

ROMANCING DE MACHINE : TWO STORIES

"Part Two, "Networked," turns to the online life as it reshapes the self I acknowledge the many 

positive things that the network has to offer — enhancing friendship, family connections, education, 

commerce, and recreation. The triunphalist narrative of the Web is the reassuring story that people 

want to hear and that technologists want to tell. But the heroic story is not the whole story. In virtual 

words and conputer games, people are flattened into personae. On social networks, people are 

reduced to their profiles. On our mobile devices, we often talk to each other on the move and with 

little disposable time — so little, in fact, that we communicate in a new language of abbreviation in 

which letters stand for words and emoticons for feelings. We don't ask the open ended "How are 

you?" Instead, we ask the more limited "Where are you?" and "What's up?" These are good questions 

for getting someone's location and making a sinple plan. They are not so good for opening a dialogue 

about conplexity of feeling. We are increasingly connected to each other but oddly more alone: in 

intimacy, new solitudes. "

DEGREES OF SEPARATION 

"Sociologist David Riesman, writing in the mid-1950s, remarked on the American turn from an inner- to an other- directed sense of self.- Without a firm inner sense of purpose, people looked to their neighbors for validation. Today, cell phone in hand, other-directedness is raised to a higher 

power. At the moment of beginning to have a thought or feeling, we can have it validated, almost 

prevalidated.

Technology does not cause but encourages a sensibility in which the validation of a 

feeling becomes part of establishing it, even part of the feeling itself

I have said that in the psychoanalytic tradition, one speaks about narcissism not to indicate people 

who love themselves, but a personality so fragile that it needs constant support.- It cannot tolerate the 

complex demands of other people but tries to relate to them by distorting who they are and splitting 

off what it needs, what it can use. So, the narcissistic self gets on with others by dealing only with 

their made-to-measure representations. These representations (some analytic traditions refer to them 

as "part objects," others as "selfobjects") are all that the fragile self can handle. We can easily 

imagine the utility of inanimate companions to such a self because a robot or a computational agent 

can be sculpted to meet one's needs. But a fragile person can also be supported by selected and 

limited contact with people (say, the people on a cell phone "favorites" list). In a life of texting and 

messaging, those on that contact list can be made to appear almost on demand. You can take what you 

need and move on. And, if not gratified, you can try someone else. 

Again, technology, on its own, does not cause this new way of relating to our emotions and other 

people. But it does make it easy. Over time, a new style of being with each other becomes socially 

sanctioned. In every era, certain ways of relating come to feel natural. In our time, if we can be 

continually in touch, needing to be continually in touch does not seem a problem or a pathology but an 

accommodation to what technology affords. It becomes the norm. "

THE AVATAR OF ME 

This kind of identity work can take place wherever you create an avatar. And it can take place on 

social-networking sites as well, where one's profile becomes an avatar of sorts, a statement not only 

about who you are but who you want to be. Teenagers make it clear that games, worlds, and social 

networking (on the surface, rather different) have much in common. They all ask you to conpose and 

project an identity. Audrey, sixteen, a junior at Roosevelt, a suburban public high school near New 

York City, is explicit about the connection between avatars and profiles. She calls her Facebook 

profile "my Internet twin" and "the avatar of me."