R says:
Do you remember when people started defining
their relationships as “It’s complicated”? This is not the only term coined
during the age of social networking – just one of the many.
Starting with emailing and then googling, we have
been introduced to social networking via linkedin, facebook, whatsapp,
instagram and countless other websites and applications that have become from
small to medium to large businesses in their own rights.
There was a time, when people spent time meeting
each other or reading a book or on other hobbies, now they spent many
of those hours on social media – liking and disliking (no such option
available – hence by way of not pressing the “like” button) each other’s life
posts. Connecting with long lost friends became possible as much as being able
to track each other’s lives. More so the social stalking (of old loves) has
become a favored time pass. These days apparently, you can just break up with
anyone over social media as well (appalling or convenient?). Do we need rules
(just like dating rules) of what should be acceptable behavior?
I was at a café in Sydney, which stated, “no we
do not have wi-fi, we encourage you to talk to each other” which left me
thinking. Has social networking really encouraged us to socialize more or has
it actually alienated us into a virtual world away from reality. Can you even
imagine your life without wi-fi anymore – not being able to check what friends
are posting on their facebook accounts?
To be fair, social media does enable social
networking, making the world flat and accessible for us. It is a pleasure to
see my long lost school friends doing so well via linkedin, and I am really
pleased to see their children growing up, their holiday jaunts via
pictures on facebook and instagram. It also enables me to keep in touch with
them and wish them on their special days (which I could never manage to
remember otherwise!). I am happy to be able to ask for advice from my
professional mentors and whom am I kidding, I have even managed to procure jobs
via linkedin. So it is definitely effective and useful.
Nothing in this world comes without a price
though, so is the case with social media. Sometimes I feel I make less effort
towards my relationships, as I would have if there were no such easy way. I
find myself favoring, spending hours on social media during weekends instead of
actually walking out of the apartment and making new friends or meeting the
ones I have. These are easier things to deal with, in my humble opinion with
some self-restraint and self-discipline. What is disturbing is when you hear
people getting punished for the opinions they expressed on social media (since its
public)! Does this mean we are losing our freedom by using an avenue truly
meant to promote freedom of speech? It is disturbing to see this channel for
bringing people together, being used as a cheap means of stalking by
anti-social elements.
Every new innovation goes through a cycle of
change, and social media is on the upward spiral in the current times. Do you
think we are leading towards ultimate disengagement or is this innovation here
to stay, just like electricity, to become an indispensible part of our lives? I
am no foreteller, so cannot predict the future course, however I do believe
that we should promote the autonomy vs. the immurement. That, I think is the
real power and it's simply complicated.
B says:
Social Media, something that we all got
introduced to through Orkut and now are addicted to through Facebook and
Linkedin. One for entertainment and the other for career - but now and I lose
track - after Facebook and Twitter, we have Snapchat, Whatsapp, Instagram,
Myspace and million other ranging from not so successful Google + to very
successful dating sites. After the word social media got popular our lives
changed drastically.
It became a way of life - we embodied all the
teachings of the marketing gurus - we knew all the Ps and the Cs, whether we
know what they stand for or not (like for the life of me I cannot remember what
they were) if you ask us to depict our vacations, festivities and display of
uber life and in some cases glamorized rural life we do it like we all
individually own a marketing theory.
Having said so, it is easy to display pomp and splendor
and easier to stalk our exes, snoop into their lives, leave them drunken
messages typed or recorded and worse never really get a grip over our lives.
Our pages are a reflection of who we are and what
we like. Our friends are a reflection of what we want since they exist on our
pages whether we have them in our lives or not.
It is like a tracking system, friends who number
unto a thousand sometimes, colleagues who send you unsolicited requests which
you cannot ignore and relatives who clutter your e space with forwards and tags.
Birthdays of people who you have trouble recalling keep popping up and game
prompts take all your attention up.
We love our social media and we are lazy because
of it. We type and better still as we type we get emoji prompts us to be nice,
funny silly and even polite.
We are lazy because we think we can have a
webpage and sharing it will be profitable - monetarily or socially.
I am beginning to believe that we are now forced
to being mediocre with social media, but the big question is had it not been
for social media would we know most of the things we do.
I firmly believe that social media is something
that we need in our live after all as R says it is innovation and in all forms
innovation is what will make us live. The thing however is, like all innovation
we need to be able to decide when to customize an innovation for our benefit,
how to contain the innovation before it goes out of hand and becomes a web
world which will neither stop terror nor replenish our natural resources
Use it wisely to help our lives and now flounder
it to display our non existent exciting lives
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