By Arzoo Sandhu (Contributor) – Email
Print Edition: March 25, 2015
If we go back a couple of years and observe the number of changes that have taken place, we would be pretty astonished in the way distance between individuals has increased. Few people had cell phones, and internet facilities were rare and their use was not widespread. Now, we have laptops, tablets, and iPhones, and the rest of the world is a click away. However, the fact that we are flooded with these devices and social networking sites has led them to dominate many aspects of our lives, indicating that somehow, somewhere, we have gone drastically wrong. I believe that in a world fast shrinking, this technology is increasing the distance between individuals.
Globalization, increased communication networks, and better information systems have surely led to better connectivity. People are interacting, sharing, and exploring new opportunities every day because of social networking’s accessibility and easy use. But on a deeper level, social networking sites are leading to something completely different from connectivity. These tools have provided us with the means to communicate, but we are beginning to lose the skills to interact; Facebook has replaced the concept of face-to-face interaction, MySpace completely eroded the concept of “our space,” and people are tweeting and snapchatting every nonsensical and miniscule detail of their day.
All this has led to deterioration in human relations. Often, people live in the same house and do not even bother to interact with each other. Nowadays people cherish their prized moments and romantic ideas not in a personal, one-to-one way, but by making online declarations as to how their relationship status is now “complicated.” It used to be that only your near and dear ones knew how your day went, but we live in a time where people consider it their moral obligation to inform all about every detail of their mundane existence. The smart phones in the hands of the not-so-smart have completely taken over the reins of their lives, and “BBM me,” “Whatsapp me,” and “Facebook me” have replaced the more modest but infinitely more powerful “talk to me.”
The truth is that as these technological tools have increased our ability to talk to each other, they have also gradually taken away the meaning of interaction from our lives. The act of congratulating and wishing someone “happy birthday” used to be a special moment for people in the past where they went out of their way to greet people in person and express themselves, often with a nice gesture like a handwritten note or card. Leave aside writing notes or greeting someone in person, now people do not even take the trouble of writing “happy birthday” — it’s been shortened to a much cooler “HBD.”
Social networking has enslaved us to an extent where we have let it take precedence over our emotions, morals, and beliefs. We may be “connected” to people online, but in reality we all are disconnected. The warmth, sincerity, and comfort that relationships in the past had are becoming rare. Therefore, before this “networking” does irreparable damage to us, let us all take a moment to unplug and think where we are headed!
