If I were to ask you a very simple question of how many people are you in touch with from back school or college. What would you say? I’d say most of them, but very few at the same time. How so?
Well, social media! It gives us the false sense of being in touch with everyone and knowing what each one of us is doing in their lives, whereas the reality is far from true. We don’t really know them in person and it’s all through their updates that we get the sense of their wellbeing but might never know how they are in real lives.
The friendship is measured nowadays by the number of likes on your post or the views on your story. More likes equal to a large circle of friends. But how many of those friends can you fall back upon when your life is going low? I later realized what it has become for people, including me, the meaning of connecting. It’s more to do with texting and chatting all day than actually talking or meeting.
Let’s take an example of our childhood. On birthdays our friends would show up at our places and we would actually celebrate the occasion with them and would feel so happy & special. Looking at it now, meeting personally has become difficult given all our friends might be put up in different cities/countries. But calling never hurts someone right? And still all the wishes we decide to shower are through a what’s app, facebook or Instagram text.
There is nothing wrong with texting it’s just that we need to understand the difference between chatting and talking. When we chat, we cannot really connect and convey our emotions as they are. On a call, however, the emotions if not expressions can be felt through the voice and that definitely is a connection because a lot can be conveyed by it. I sometimes wonder, how busy have we become in the mad rat race of life that we’ve completely missed out on the fact the whole purpose of friendship was to be happy and make others around us happy. To be there with them in good and bad times.
But since the advent of social media, whatever little time we do have leftover is spent on scrolling and browsing through social media judging, comparing and sometimes feeling bad for ourselves of not being able to accomplish what others have.
When I see people around me going out, all they worry about is capturing that best photo/video of the moment and posting it on social media immediately for others to see that they are having a great time. But are they present in that place or with their friends or even at that moment? Each time they forget the whole reason they came out was to have a good time with their friends. Now taking pictures or videos is not the concern here. It’s the urge to post it right away and to wait for people to like or respond to it that makes it worse.
Honestly, it does get intimidating sometimes to see others posting such awesomeness. But do we ever pause to think no one’s life can be that perfect and everyone has a different face to their story which they would not post on social media?
So instead of getting depressed, I’d rather get inspired and motivated by posts that uplift me and motivate me to do better in life. That would be putting social media to good use.
The main motive of Social media was for connecting, but as a method of larger networking and to be updated with what’s happening around. To make it the primary way of communication was uncalled for.
But sad how it has become a part of our lives so much so that, we would get anxious if the internet were to drawn away for some time.
Social media is leading to our generation avoiding talking to each other and becoming more reserved within themselves. I’ve seen people getting irritated if they have to talk to other people because it involves a lot of drama.They do not understand, it only teaches us patience of how to deal with all kinds of people and at the same time giving that maturity to understand how different people think and respect everybody’s opinion without getting offended.
Social media is good for networking but you know what’s even better? It’s talking to people because one might remember a person who came up and spoke to them or called and spoke to them than just someone who sent a random text message.
In this era of fast-moving people and technology, all I’m trying to put across is that we millennials have forgotten the real essence of relations and connecting with people.
It’s time to surround ourselves with like-minded people who support and empower each other to live authentically and experience gratitude and happiness on an ongoing basis. And if you’re worried about not being accepted when/if you live life differently than most, you may actually discover the opposite is true.
You’ll start to attract people that think and feel like you do. So figure out what makes you light up in a way nothing else can, regardless of what is “normal” or trending on social media and you will start to develop some real connections.
Change is difficult and bad habits are adopted too easily. To be able to connect with people truly, we will have to make a little more effort.
Maybe just start by picking up your phones this time and dialing in instead of typing and feel the difference for yourself of how good it feels to be able to hear your loved ones.
The false intimacy of social media is making things worse by day and there is nothing major that we can do about it.
Or can we?
The answer lies within ourselves.
Seek out moments of true connections.
Image Courtesy- huffingtopost.com; sociobits.org; ltkcdn.net; giphy.com
