It is the
trending thing these days to see people logging on to their various social
media platforms so they can electronically connect with friends. The world has
never been so interconnected. Although some experts agree that the internet
improves social relations, and also helps to reduce cost of communication and
will continue to do so over the years, psychologists have however and are still
arguing that social media sites don’t deepen relationships but rather, they are
beginning to question the effects on the internet in the society.
New studies
indicate that the electronic super interconnections of our lives today comes at
a risk which includes the death of real friendships and conversations, loss of
privacy and increase in intolerance. The study indicates that even though social
media applications like Facebook, WhatsApp, twitter, email etc all have their
place, they do not substitute for conversation no matter how valuable. Instead
of people walking together with their heads up, looking at one another and
engaging in intimate real conversations, people now walk with their heads down,
typing on tiny keyboard or screens. Even when they are with families,
colleagues, friends, in the bus, office, on campus, everyone is always busy
with his/her device; hooking up to artificial e-friendships, relationships and
conversations thereby shutting themselves more away from the original versions
in their physical environment.
In his book
“The Effect of technology on relationships: The risk of internet addiction”, Dr
Alex Lickerman states that we may enjoy online relationships via social media
sites, but spending too much time trying to electronically connect and
communicate with others could engender a greater sense of social isolation than
triggered it in the first place. “The problems usually come when we find
ourselves subtly substituting electronic relationships for physical ones or
mistaking our electronic relationships for physical ones” he further stressed. So
when people are alone, even for a few moments, they fidget and reach for their
device. Therefore connection work like an addiction not a cure and our constant,
reflexive impulse to connect shapes a new way of being.
In order to
feel more like ourselves and escape loneliness, we connect to the web on our
devices, turn to other people on the internet that we barely knows, to feel the
void, but don’t experience them like our real, intimate friends that we
physically interact with and trust. It is as though we use our e-friends,
needing them as spare parts to support our increasingly delicate selves.
These days,
social media continue to ask: ‘What’s on your mind?’ but we however have little
or no motivation to say something truly self-reflective unlike we would when we
are in a conversation with our physical friends because it is hard to actually
do anything with over 1000 ‘friends’, except just to connect.
What are your
thoughts? Do you agree or not? Share your views
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