How social media is disconnecting us? What’s happening now and how can we do better? Gallup took a poll in 2001 and every average American said that they have 10 really close friends. The same poll in 2014 said we had 2 close friends. So, what happened? Where did everybody go? And I think we know where.
We’ve all seen this by know maybe even been a little guilty of ourselves. I see families like this out for dinner all the time and it drives me nuts. I see couples on dates clearly together but on their cell phones. It’s one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen. But, to me what does this say when we are together, that says that there is someone on the other end of the screen that is way more important than you. There’s a study by Mary Meeker that says we check our phones a hundred and fifty times a day and we upload about 1.8 billion pictures to Facebook.
Social media is making us unsocial. Social media is killing relationships and replacing experience. People become unfriendly because they spend most of their valuable time using social media and rarely interact directly with other people. The implication of excessive use of social platforms is that they move away from friendships and relationships that actually occur in real life. It not only prevents them from being gregarious but also turns humans into addicted creatures devoid of emotion and compassion for others. Someone becomes more interested in social media to do various things or activities.
Social media has made the world a better place for us. But it has also been killing our relationships. Those long discussions in hostel rooms, cousins laughing after seeing old photo album, and those random conversations in trains; it seems like all this is fading away. Social media has replaced our experiences as well. While dining out, we let our food get cold to click those Instagram perfect images and share them online. Social media today has made us dependent on how people perceive us. We are in dire need of them to like us. But what about the ones who already like us. To them, we’re just giving out reasons to dislike us.
Been a teen, we face difficulty talking to people in front of us. But the same us is comfortable talking to virtual friends. We know back in days children would play outside with friends of their ages. This helped them socialize but we don’t see the same happen today; from childhood we get a device called mobile phones and laptops with many games which connect us to this amazing virtual world which seems to be difficult to escape. Whether it is s five-year-old child or a ninety-five-year-old granny, everyone needs phone 24/7 with them. Playing with neighbors is a big thing to ask as we hardly know the family staying next to us. This was good for our health also as it kept us healthy but now, we don’t play anymore. We are more into video games than outdoor activities; that has affected our lifestyle.
We post things on social media, expecting friends to know what is happening in our lives instead of meeting and catching up. We hold cell phones more often than we hold hands and make friends that we have never met in real life. Basically, we live life behind screens. To worsen things, one never fails to pick up their cell phone in awkward situations instead of making the effort to talk and bond. Also, during gatherings, I reckon that people use their phones too. So much that we spend time with our phones more than with people. I think our lives will be better if we had hands to hold and not keys to click.
Nevertheless, social media is not all bad, but we need to know how to balance between using social media and staying connected with face-to-face conversations. For a start, we can try keeping our phones away for an hour a day.