Media Review - Internet, Technology and Relationships

As we finish our month-long media review of 2021, we’ll quickly look at the top visited sites of last year but we’re going to focus on one big announcement that has the potential to change all of our lives and relationships moving forward. The top 10 most visited sites of 2021 were:

1. TikTok.com

2. Google.com

3. Facebook.com

4. Microsoft.com

5. Apple.com

6. Amazon.com

7. Netflix.com

8. YouTube.com

9. Twitter.com

10. WhatsApp.com

TikTok, Google and Facebook continued to lead the way for top sites or apps this past year, but with Facebooks announcement of Meta, we very well could see them positioned for internet dominance in the years to come. What is Meta? What will it do? How could it affect our lives and relationships? Those are the questions we’ll be answering today.

So, what is Meta? According to Meta/Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta is “the company that designs technology around people.” Initially, it sounded like Meta was simply going to be the umbrella company that would preside over all the apps and technologies related entities that Facebook has developed or acquired over the years. That perception quickly changed, however, as the Metaverse was brought more into view. In their announcement video, Zuckerberg showed how Meta was not just a new brand for the existing company, but a new way of connecting people with and through technology in a much deeper way than we ever have before.

According to Zuckerberg, the Metaverse will be a fully immersive combination of augmented, virtual and mixed reality. Utilizing vr technology, holograms and cgi, the metaverse will become a new digital world that can interact and even overlap with the real world around us. You can create your own virtual home and fill it with real world objects as well as your own digital creations. You can design your own avatar to represent your presence in the metaverse and use this avatar to attend meetings at work or a surprise party for a friend halfway around the world. You can create rooms to meet up with friends and family to play games, watch movies together, talk and hang out. You can also create private areas that are only accessible to you. With all of this potential, what are some of the benefits that the Metaverse could provide?

Over the past couple of years, many jobs that would previously require a physical presence have now been transitioned to being managed at least partially or many times even fully remote. The ability to work from home is great, and the potential applications for remote work greatly expand accessibility for both those looking for jobs and the companies looking for competent workers. If your search pool is not limited to those in your specific area, you have a much wider opportunity for finding the right fit on both sides. Also, the ability to make long-distance relationships not feel so long-distance is a huge upside, as well. With the technological advancements that are possible on the horizon, friends and family who are separated by miles and time, could virtually “be there” in a moment with the simple switch of a device. You could live where you want, travel for work, go abroad for school and yet still be able to connect with your loved ones in a much more immersive way than words or pictures on a screen. There is a lot of potential for real good to come out of the Metaverse, but what could be the downsides?

If you’ve lived long enough, you’ve already seen how amazing new technology can be and how convenient it can make our lives. Those same technologies, however, can cause us to sink deeper and deeper into these new, immersive worlds and shut out the real world around us. How many movies have we seen recently with this exact premise; A dystopian future where people have become fixated with virtual reality and digital fantasies, all the while the world and their lives around them are falling apart? The ability to create a fictional world and a fictional version of yourself in it, can be extremely alluring. The problem is, you are not a digital entity, you’re a human being. No matter how great our technology becomes at mimicking real, human connection and interaction, you will be starving yourself of what is truly needed if you live your life on this digital platform. The Frederick’s experiment showed what happens when human beings are given everything they need outside of physical and verbal communication with another person; we die. When technology connects us to people from all around the world but pulls us away from the people closest to us, we end up losing a whole lot more than we’ve gained.

Well, that wraps up our 2021 review. We’ve covered the music, movies, shows and websites of 2021, but there was way to much that happened last year to talk about everything. What were some of the highlights for you in 2021? Let us know in the comments below!