Social means related to society, and social media is a platform that is supposed to bind us together
with our society but that’s not the reality. Over the years social media has reached peaks and has grown
to be one of our primary means of communication. As social media continues to grow and people continue
to move their lives onto an online database, it is making people more anti-social.
Social networking sites are making us antisocial in many indirect and not so obvious ways. Yes, it has
indeed given us ways to reach out to a larger set of people and redefined the way we interact with each
other. Ideally, we should have become more and more connected with our society as a result of social
media but is it working out the way it should’ve? People are getting more and more addicted to screens
than faces spending two to six hours on social media and the numbers keep going up. And a lot of credit
goes to Steve Jobs, the invader of the iPhone and co-founder of apple computers. But when you picture
Steve he makes sure that his head is up addressing the crowd, looking into someone's eyes and not bend
over the little screen, that so many of us hold in our hands. People believe that being 24x7 on the
internet makes them connected to the outside world. Little do they realize that it only is consuming
them and it's just their screens that are connected to other screens and not people. This is the
difference between real society and a virtual online society.
Due to the smoothness that social media provides, millions of people have begun to move their
interactions and conversations to the online world. Whenever someone calls us on our phone, A whole
conversation starts happening in our head when it rings, why is this person calling me? Why at this
hour? and then finally at the last ring, you have to answer it. Hey, what’s up, the whole time thinking
that he could have just texted the whole thing to me. One more important note about texting is that,
though it has increased our typing speed somewhere decreased our vocab. Abbreviations used like omg
which stands for oh my goodness, lol for laugh out loud, and many more. So when we abbreviate our
vocabulary what we risk is losing the new answers, subtleties, and intimate part of our personalities.
This way of not being able to fully express ourselves and communicate as we move forward and losing our
vocabulary equals a potential loss of being able to express ourselves.
Nowadays, instead of catching up with an old friend or someone else personally over lunch, coffee, etc.,
people prefer texting or messaging each other through social media platforms eliminating face-to-face
interactions. Furthermore, due to the constant posting of pictures on Facebook or Instagram, some people
feel as if they are already caught up on the lives of their friends and feel that there's no need to
personally message them, making them very anti-social. It seems as though instead of making an effort to
verbally reconnect with old friends, people would rather sit at home on their devices and learn what
their friends are into through any social media platform. This perfectly explains how social media is
making us disconnected by connecting us in this way.
Social media has also become one of the most addictive things amongst teens. Addictive because we have
forgotten that there's a world outside it, addictive because we have forgotten that faces with us are
more than important than faces on our screen, addictive because we have started trusting texts than the
emotion behind it, addictive because we have begun living a reel life than a real one. A new study out
says that this year, Texting while driving is the number one cause of death of teens more than drinking
and driving.
I think one of the reasons that people get easily stuck to online social networking is the level of
their openness on this platform. People are quite open and free to express their thoughts when it comes
to doing it online. like, online dating is one of the trending things going on, you don't even know who
your angel Priya is? with whom you've been talking with your whole and soul. Uday Pratap
Singh, one of the great poets of our country has rightly said that "the lovers of the
mobile era will never understand how we kept our heart in our letters".It has made us lost
something too important, as it plays a major role in our personal as well as social life and that's
patience. as soon as we send a message we need instant replies, we cannot wait at all. The wait has gone
and left us with impatience.
Meeting at the table be it with our family while dinner, friends in the canteen or on a date, rather
than personally talking to them we are eagerly waiting to post stories, get likes and talking about
posting pictures or uploading stories, the number of likes is equal to our self-esteem. And there are
plenty of examples of how socially disconnected it is making us.
Thus, social media is supposed to make us more and more connected but it's up to us to decide which
connections do matter.
Gone are the days when we enjoyed the platter,
Father’s beatings, shoutings from our mother,
no birthday hugs, text them rather,
A post for valentine does matter,
A WhatsApp group does not gather,
Yes, we are close but together!