By Alshiffa Alaa
They lure you in with their grabbing, simple layout and genius idea. Come, join us and keep in touch with all those friends you havent been able to keep in touch with for so many years. Doesnt matter where they are or what they are doing. They market it as a œsocial website that helps you œconnect, but slowly you find yourself disconnecting from the real world, living in an unreal, imaginative world, where lies and deceit is just a click away.
A few days ago, I took the decision to take a second look in a profile that became precious to me in a way that exceeded what would be considered healthy and good. More than a thousand friends, almost 4000 followers, pictures of me doing things that portray a different lifestyle than the real one I am actually living. A profile that didnt include anything about the times I spent hours scrolling down its newsfeed, feeling a mixture of guilt and emptiness. It didnt include how fragile I felt, or that fact that I do sometimes stalk people secretly on this œsocial network, too afraid to talk to them, approach them and tell them what I wanted to tell them.
This decision I took to take a closer look at my profile resulted in the much hated action of œunfriend-ing some of the people that I did not know in real life. It didnt take much time for me to get the first angry message with the question œWhy did you un-friend me. It took me a very great deal of restraint to ask œWhy should I have an unknown person on my friends list. However, politely I explained why I did so. The person didnt answer back.
Facebook, in so many people`s lives, isnt something that is used in leisure time or on a temporary basis instead it became something more that oxygen itself. How many of us are guilty of checking their Facebook profiles first thing in the morning and last thing before they go to bed? How many of us are guilty of checking it during their very-much social, real-life interactions with real people? How many leave the dinner table the moment they hear the familiar notification ringtone? How many break their study-time short to go back to aimlessly scrolling down Facebook`s newsfeed?
I think what we are facing right now with Facebook is an addiction that has to be addressed and treated by those who do still care about the future of this world. Â For instance, Facebook has no place for privacy on its walls. Facebook is all about interaction and even though you have the œOnly Me button there, you are always haunted with the fear that œWho are you writing this to. Facebook profiles are not made for you to keep a diary or your personal thoughts, its there to make you enclose more about your life, have more people comment, like and acknowledge it.
They took a real life full of love and hugs and words of kindness said with emotion and feelings and turned them to likes and pokes and comments and emoticons. We are, from a mental, social and emotional perspective, cyborgs. We treat each other from a very electronic, virtual, unreal, and non-existent point of view.
We exist only in the walls of our laptops and hand-phone screens. But when was the last time we went out for coffee, just coffee, with our friends. I bet few would remember. They sold us isolation in a box with the word œsocial written all over it. We believed them to the extent that we fail to see how isolated and lonely we are.
We are in a deep state of denial. We even forgot the art and techniques of communication. We let them strip us of what makes us human. We let them strip us of our ability to verbally and non-verbally communicate. Holding eye contact causes more strain now, we frequently doze off during conversations trying to get a thorough picture as if running down our newsfeed, not paying attention to the little details communicated to us, that makes the world count.
The more social we get on Facebook, the lonelier we are in reality. As far as it is for me, it’s going to be downhill on Facebook interaction from now on. I will do more real and less virtual, how about you? ***
Photo taken from Design and Trend