The number of social networking sites are increasing by the
day and most technology literate people, especially the youngsters, are hooked
on to one platform or the other. These websites came as a boon to people who
are away from their family and friends due to work, studies and other
unavoidable commitments.
They provide free means of communication, entertainment and
networking facilities for professional and personal purposes. One can keep
track of developments in the lives of people connected to them with the least
of efforts.
However, in course of time, the tools that were aids became
a necessity and eventually an addiction. Mere websites became benchmarks for
determining friends and foes, for gauging one’s own acceptability, to judge
loyalties, and of course, social standing.
The obsession with impressing others, already fuelled by a
culture driven by consumerism, takes uncontrollable proportions. People are
devoting time, energy and money into ‘perfecting’ their virtual lives and in
the end, lose out in real life.
Though a direct comparison will be an exaggeration, the film
Matrix kind of portrays the situation of those who are totally dependent on
social networking sites. In the movie, all are plugged into a virtual reality
that caters to all needs. People go about their lives full of happiness and all
seem perfect. However, the reality is that all are nothing but masses of flesh
and bone cocooned in containers, with no connection to real life. For example,
a bodybuilding champion in the matrix is in reality as weak as a newborn.
There have been reports of relationships breaking off due to
disagreements over what should be its influence on the partners’ online
profiles. Wives and husbands dumping partners because they are ‘single’
online!!!
Many confess to using photo editing tools to make themselves
look better in their display pictures and admit that one of their biggest
worries is about friends tagging them in photographs that would provide a
reality contrast to the carefully managed online profiles.
It was barely a year ago when an East Asian couple, obsessed
with an online virtual farming game on a top social networking site, kept
forgetting to feed their child. Though the farms plants and animals thrived due
to constant monitoring, the real child succumbed to a malnutrition-induced
ailment. These networking platforms have also emerged as hot spots of
e-bullying where people gang up to insult, blackmail and defame others. The
number of suicides and violent crimes that is in some way or the other
connected to social networking sites are rising at an alarming rate.
However, blaming social networking sites would be akin to
blaming liquor for alcoholism. It is our uncontrolled pursuit of limelight that
is enabling these platforms to act as force-multipliers for vices and abuse.
Virtual world bonding stops at virtual levels and cannot
help with real life issues. If we spend a fraction of our online time in making
real friends and socialising, we will be much better off. And you won’t have
some friend’s friend’s friend making comments on your looks.
Come on, these are just websites and nothing more. Let us
not give them the importance they don’t deserve and allow them to dictate our
social life.
(This article was published as the editorial column in
Postnoon on September 26, 2012)
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