What is the first thing you do when you wake up? Before coffee, before your feet even touch the floor, chances are you reach for your phone. It has become a phantom limb, an extension of our very consciousness. We check for likes, scroll through news, and peer into the lives of friends and strangers. This ritual feels ancient, yet social media is a recent invention that has fundamentally altered the fabric of our society. Why did it appear, why does it hold such power over us, and how has it reshaped our minds and our world?

A Network Without a Center

Long before the internet existed, the philosophical seeds of social media were sown in the 1960s. The French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, with his collaborator Félix Guattari, introduced the concept of the "rhizome." Think of a mushroom colony: it has no single origin point, no center, and no defined end. It's a sprawling, interconnected network where every point can connect to any other point.

Deleuze used this image to describe a new way of understanding knowledge. Imagine you want to learn about philosophy. You don't have to start with the ancient Greeks. You might be drawn to the existentialists, read Albert Camus, and through his work, find references to Jean-Paul Sartre. This leads you to Martin Heidegger's Being and Time, where you discover the pervasive influence of Immanuel Kant. To understand Kant, you realize you need to grasp Plato, and only then do you arrive at the very beginning. You traverse the landscape of thought by following connections, much like clicking from one hyperlink to another, descending into depths of the internet you never intended to find. This rhizomatic, non-linear structure is the very essence of how we navigate the digital world.

The Global Village and Its Stage

In that same revolutionary decade, the philosopher Marshall McLuhan argued that technology is not merely a tool but the primary driver of historical change. In his seminal work, The Gutenberg Galaxy, he identified Johannes Gutenberg's printing press as a pivotal invention. It allowed for the rapid, identical reproduction of texts, which created a more homogeneous society unified by a shared, printed point of view.

McLuhan foresaw the coming of a new electronic culture. Even before the internet, he recognized that technology was shrinking the world, giving rise to the "global village." What defines a village? Everyone knows everyone else's business. Nothing is truly hidden. McLuhan predicted that new media would impose this village dynamic on a global scale. Suddenly, people of every conceivable background are present in our daily communicative space. This raises the stakes for everything we do and say. The institution of reputation takes on a new, supercharged meaning, demanding a new kind of ethic to navigate these unprecedented connections.

Yet, McLuhan didn't see technology as inherently good or evil; it is like an axe that can be used to build a home or to cause harm. It is a tool, and we are the ones who fill the new cultural forms it creates with content. In his later work, he updated his metaphor from a "global village," where we mostly consume information, to a "global theater." In this theater, we are not just the audience; we are all active producers. This is precisely how social networks function. The old model of one-way broadcasting has been shattered and replaced by person-to-person casting. Everyone can be their own channel.

The All-Seeing Eye and the Currency of Likes

This shift has profound consequences. The vertical relationships of the past, built on top-down power, are giving way to horizontal connections. Social networks empower people to organize and unite outside of traditional institutions, fueling everything from environmental initiatives to political movements.

Simultaneously, the French philosopher Michel Foucault described a new form of power in modern society. It is no longer concentrated in a single ruler but is dissolved into our social structures. We don't need a guard with a baton to stop us from shoplifting; the mere presence of a security camera—or even a fake one—is enough. The knowledge that we might be watched is enough to make us regulate our own behavior. In the digital world, we are all under constant, invisible surveillance. We leave digital traces with every click, post, and search, constructing a digital reputation that employers and institutions may scrutinize more closely than any official document.

This environment has given rise to new forms of social approval. Where once there were official titles and honors, now there are likes, shares, and subscriptions. We become dependent on these digital affirmations. Have you ever felt a pang of anxiety when a post you cared about received no likes? It taps into a primal fear of exclusion. Our virtual image is no longer separate from our real life; it is a critical part of it. A person's or a company's capital can now literally depend on followers and likes.

This has changed our relationship with even the most fundamental concepts of life and death. If a person hasn't logged in for a long time, we begin to worry. When so much of life is lived through communication, a prolonged absence feels like a kind of death. To not be online is, in a sense, to not be alive. At the same time, our social feeds have become spaces where the living coexist with the dead—memorialized pages and scheduled future posts allow a digital ghost to linger. As death researchers say, the cemetery has returned to the city.

Social media has irrevocably changed our culture, often in ways so subtle we fail to notice as the new becomes normal. Is it a blessing or a curse? Have you felt it change you? The one certainty is that our world, and our perception of it, will never be the same.

References

• Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press.
  This book is the source of the "rhizome" concept discussed in the article. The introductory chapter, "Introduction: Rhizome" (pp. 3-25), lays out the principles of connectivity and heterogeneity, contrasting the decentralized rhizomatic model with traditional, hierarchical "tree" structures of thought. It provides the philosophical underpinning for understanding network culture.
• McLuhan, M. (1962). The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. University of Toronto Press.
  This foundational text of media studies directly supports the article's points about technological determinism. McLuhan explains how the invention of the printing press reshaped Western society, moving it from an oral/scribal culture to a visual and uniform one. This historical example serves as the basis for understanding how electronic media, in turn, created the "global village."
• Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Pantheon Books.
  The section on "Panopticism" (pp. 200-228) is particularly relevant. Foucault uses the architectural model of the Panopticon prison—where a central guard can see every inmate, but the inmates cannot know if they are being watched—as a metaphor for how modern power operates. This directly relates to the article's discussion of surveillance, self-regulation, and how the feeling of being constantly observed shapes behavior in the digital age.