Connect To Disconnect
Comment 1
Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.
George Burns
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Comment 2
The capacity for friendship is God's way of apologising for our families.
Jay McInerney
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Comment 3
When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching -- they are your family.
Jim Butcher
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Comment 4
The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only - and that is to support the ultimate career.
C.S. Lewis
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The rise of social media in modern society has created globalisation and interconnectedness between people in civilisation. This is often seen as a positive transformation to the world in which humans reside in. People can create friendships online and have access to each other freely on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. While this can be beneficial, the downside of this online global village is often not analysed to discuss the negative impacts that it has on creating deep and meaning relationships offline with our families and friendships in places such as the workplace, educational institutions and extracurricular activities. Social media distracts the individual from creating deep and meaningful relationships with close relative and friends leading to superficial relationships with the people that the person may interact with daily. Furthermore, reliance on these platforms for interaction leads to relationships that are mundane due to the lack of emotion, real life experience and interactions with the people on the other side while exposing the user to potential harm. The glamourise aspects of social media need to be analysed to reveal the potential dangers that this form of interaction is causing to the relationships that human have with their families and friends as well as the exposure to harm.
Social media platforms aim to connect people on their network creating a virtual world where people can communicate. However, the intentions of platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat can be questioned due to algorithms and functions of these applications that are specifically formulated to keep people on these apps for more time than intended. Daily user times on these applications can be extraordinary causing people to lose connection with the real world, degrading relationships with family, friends and colleagues. When was the last time that you checked your phone after getting a notification from one of these apps or do you have an urge to check your social media regularly? Evidence has shown that people spend hours of their days on social media, especially the younger generation. Addiction to phone devices has been researched with evidence showing the alarming increase in rate as technology continues to have huge influence on our lives. The compounded time that people spend on social media has a profound impact on the relationships which people have in real life as humans have less time to form deep and meaningful interactions with people in their lives. Relationships in real life tend to have more meaning than those established on these platforms. For instance, a deep connection with family and close friends can benefit the individual tremendously in various facets of life such as emotional support through human emotional expression and communication.
Even though social media facilitates interactions, the platforms cannot replace the love, care and warmth experienced from the human senses such as touch and emotive speech. Generally, when interacting on social media with others the form of communication is through text which tends to be non-emotional. Imagine that the only form of communication with your loved ones was through text, this form of communication could never allow for true connection to those that you love. Furthermore, miscommunication can occur between users on these platforms due to no facial expressions and tone of voice leading to conflict. There are inherent limitations to these platforms that cannot replace real life connection between people.
Paradoxically, while social media may connect people on their platform, increased use of these platforms leads to disconnection of people in real life. Social media use can have its benefits, the limitations of these platforms must be analysed to prevent the negative effects that it may have on our lives. Awareness of the impact on these platforms on creating and maintaining personal relationships in real life is essential to prevent us from losing touch of the human lived experience. These platforms can serve a role in an individual’s life but should not be allowed to consume time set for facilitating real life interactions and connection with friends and family. Only through real life interactions can human express themselves truly emotionally allowing for experiences that facilitate bonding. Even though this is may seem biased, it is without a doubt that the negative effects of social media must be investigated to understand the underlying detriment of these platforms on real life relationships which are is not discussed by companies such as Facebook and Instagram that hail their platforms as creating interconnectedness.