What I’ve come to realize is that while our potential identities are infinite, our energy is not. Energy put into one identity is energy taken from another. To be Very Online is to be Never Offline. To become infinite is to become infinitesimal somewhere else. As Turkle wrote in The Second Self :

“For adults as well as children, computers... offer

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I don’t want to sound too much like the "we should improve society somewhat" meme, because obviously, people are going to talk about being less online...online. Social media remains a key arena for discourse about cultural, technological, and social issues. That said, I want to make two points.

First, being offline has become an aesthetic language... See more