By Maryam Shikh Nasir
Social media as we all know is globally used and many people have become addicted to it. As defined in the dictionary, social media is a digital technology websites and other online means of communication used by a huge number of people and they do share information and develop social and professional contacts. Besides that, some people do share their personal life, posting selfies and frequent updates of status.
Quiet few years ago, people have a lot of time to spend with family members and friends where they can go for trips and on journeys together. It can be said that in the past people are used to have face to face communication, interpersonal sharing moments and it also helped to solve problems. For example, a daughter can talk to parents about her problems, feelings and chit chat together without the disturbance of social media notifications and smart phones.
Compared to the present time, it is difficult to maintain face to face communication between two parties as people prefer to converse online. Although people still meet each other and talk but the focus of conversation does not sustain for a longer time. This is problematic, when it comes to family gathering when those in the younger generation are playing with their smart phones, chatting through the social media for what they feel are more important than to focus on face to face conversation.
I was in my advertising class last week when I observed a presentation on a topic “Connect and Disconnect”. The topic was really interesting based on online survey where the findings say many people use social media and chatted during family gathering and meetings. Unfortunately majority of their respondents were female, which gave me a certain feeling that made me think why there were more females compared to males using the social media. Based on my readings there are some significant differences between female and male brains. The language centred in male brain is usually in the dominant which means usually left hemisphere, whereas females use both hemispheres of the brain to process the language, this might explain why females are stronger than males in communication skills and interpersonal communication. Besides that some females learn to speak and read earlier than boys.
Secondly, face to face communication is barley practised by groups, family members and friends, it becomes more to online active communication. The important thing about meeting and face to face communication especially with family members and friends and from Islamic perspective it says that adab is very important even with unknown people, so how about family members and friends? Adab is akhlaq.
“Truly, you have the best of manners” (Quran, Al Qalam: verse 4). It is from Akhalq, to maintain eyes and body gestures in front of family gathering, meetings and any party, because being busy chatting and playing with our own smart phones does not give good impression.
There are things that should be private and cannot be shared by social media but there are some people who do share their personal pictures, family pictures and tag them. May be it is okay for them to be viral. I remembered one time my lecturer was telling us that I do go to cinemas and enjoy my family life outside but I didn’t share any in my social media, then questions came why madam?? She said because if any suspicious people might know my every step and can make anything they want, whether to me or my family members or to my home.
Human beings are the creation and anyone can make mistakes, but a good person will not make that mistake again and learn from it. This is where we have to refer to Al-Quran and Al-Hadith not one time but in our whole life and whenever we are not sure of doing new things and whether acceptable or not in Islamic perspective and society or tradition.
As the saying goes,“Knowledge without Adab” is like fire without wood, and “Adab without Knowledge” is like a spirit without a body”.***