الفهرس 
AbstractOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Thanks to their brilliant skill in the field of drama and theater as well as their awareness of the new and the updated problems that face the different societies around the world, the two playwrights (i.e., Ian McWethy and Carrie McCrossen) find in the genera of drama the prober medium to shed the light on the danger of social media addiction and its negative impacts on the individual and the society. Social media invasion to the modern world and its negative impacts is a matter of fact. This study is conducted to investigate the negative impacts of social media on users’ lives and social skills as presented in the set of plays under study. The study covers three contemporary plays namely Facebook Ruins everything (2013) by Ian McWethy and Carrie McCrossen, The Internet is Distract--OH LOOK A KITTEN! (2015), and This Is Your Brain on Social Media (2018) both by Ian McWethy. The three plays discuss the negative impacts of social media on users from various perspectives. They highlight the negative impacts of social media on different levels: the individual user, the family, the circle of friends, and the whole community. The vitality of the issue that these three plays cover makes them unique and important literary works for study. The study leads to an in-depth analysis of the impact of social media platforms on both the individual and the society as discussed in the plays. The study concludes that users and providers of social media should cooperate to reach the most benefit of this invention and at the same time to keep it useful and not to let it to be addictive.
In The Internet is Distract--OH LOOK A KITTEN! (2015), McWethy employs anthropomorphism to introduce social media platforms as characters so audience see the most possible image that can show such social media negative impacts. In this study, it is revealed that the use of anthropomorphized social media platforms as characters brings a high degree of understanding the negative impacts of such platforms to the audience. The use of social media platforms as characters does not weaken the play or its message. On the contrary, it reflects the malice and meanness of such social media platforms and how they trick users and destroy their social skills and real lives. McWethy chooses to use social media platforms as characters to embody their mean nature, and negative sides in front of the audience. The embodying of these platforms as characters helps the audience who are mostly users of social media to reach a clear understanding of the dangerous and negative effects of these social media sites on individual and society. Most of present audience are daily users of social media sites. Thus, the play helps them to get a clear awareness of the reality of these social media platforms and their negative impacts and this led the audience to be objective in their judgments concerning these social media platforms and their negative effects.
The positive criticism of social media and their negative impacts stated by the playwright in The Internet is Distract--OH LOOK A KITTEN! (2015) goes on in This Is Your Brain on Social Media (2018) by Ian McWethy, and Carrie McCrossen where it helps the audience to fully understand the danger they are exposed to as social media users. As a contemporary play, This Is Your Brain on Social Media (2018) is a cautionary play that criticizes social media and warns people about the negative impacts of such addictive platforms. The study explores how social media affects various users with different backgrounds in several ways as presented in the play understudy. The study concludes that different users are affected in different ways by the addictive nature of social media. Addiction of social media is the common negative affect that almost all users suffer. The negative impacts of social media addiction reach different levels: the individual, the family, and the community.
In Facebook Ruins everything (2013) by Ian McWethy, the playwright focuses on the negative impacts of different social media sites on users’ personal relations and work environment. He used his play as warning signs for the negative impact of the addictive social media platforms such as Facebook and the other social media platforms. The study reveals that social media addiction has profound negative impacts on the three pillars of society: the individual (e.g., depression, isolation, and bad temper), the family (e.g., family members mutism), and the community (e.g., neglect of face-to-face communication and the collapse of work environment). The study of the play concludes that users of social media have to learn how to use it well by thinking about the importance of the real activities of life and the danger of such addictive social media platforms. The study concludes that social media can be used in a way that helps users in different sides like study, work, and communicating with their friends and family members, but it depends on the awareness of the user to use such social media sites safely, so they do not become addictive.
All the three plays are cautionary plays that investigate the negative impacts of social media and its negative effects on users. In Facebook Ruins everything (2013) the playwright focus on the negative impacts of social media on the individual’s social skills and mindset, in The Internet is Distract--OH LOOK A KITTEN! (2015) the playwright discusses the distractive nature of social media and its negative effects on users and the community, and in This Is Your Brain on Social Media (2018) the playwrights present a number of different stories about a set of the social media users that show how social media affects different sides of the users’ lives. The choice of young users as main characters in the three plays emphasizes the young generation as the main users of such social media sites. The common message of the three plays is that users have to pay attention to the way they use social media and the time they spend on these platforms. Social media is a double-edged weapon, and it depends on the user’s awareness to use these social media sites in the best way.
The study of the negative impacts of social media as presented in the three plays under study can offer deep insight into the nature of these social media platforms and how they affect users. This study presents an opportunity to advance understanding of the social media sites and their negative impacts on users’ lives and social skills. The study asserts the role of drama as profound medium of literature in discussing modern and present problems and issues. It reveals the numerous possibilities that modern drama can offer to discuss and solve present problems. In addition, while most of the studies done on drama focused on their structure as literary works, little has been said on the real value of drama in tackling such modern problems and issues.
For further investigation of the impacts of social media on users, future researchers can turn their attention to explore modern drama written by fresh playwrights all over the world. Fresh playwrights belong to the age of social media and its breakthrough; thus, the work of such playwrights will be the best choice to discuss and study such modern problem and issue. In this respect, the American cautionary play Me, My Selfie & I (2017) by the American playwright and screenwriter Jonathan Dorf can be approached. Award-winning playwright Jonathan Dorf uses this one act “dramedy” to explore the world of social media that users live in. In the play, users seem to be recording their every experience and memory, but they seem to forget to live and enjoy the moments that create these memories. The play explores a group of teens who are struggling to find the balance between documenting their lives on social media and living them in the real world. Psychoanalytic literary criticism can be applied to Me, My Selfie & I since it explores the role of consciousness and the unconscious in literature including that of the author, reader, and characters in the text.