I was out of Facebook for two years. What did I miss? Updates about my friends who got married, some had children and some moved to different parts of the world. Well, I would admit many more things on professional ground as well. But, where do we draw the line? What are we trying to connect with? After returning to Facebook, I realised that I was much behind others, who had moved on to Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram etc.
Of course, I use WhatsApp. My friends could just get the update of my life through WhatsApp. “You slept at 2 am last night and you got up at 10 am. I checked on WhatsApp. You were online till 2 am,” a friend said. Everything about everyone can be known just by scrolling on the phone screen.
But, do we really need to tell the whole world what we are feeling all the time? Where we are dining, what we are having for lunch, what I am wearing today and when I have had a haircut. Our lives revolve around those virtual “likes” and smileys. Do we really tell the same thing when we meet the person? Forget about telling the same, do we really talk? The screen between us has taken over that place for talking, discussing and laughing. We have smileys and emoticons to do it for us. Even to express what we are feeling.
Recently, when I called a friend for dinner, we met, but hardly talked. My friend was busy with his phone. After a while even I was busy with my phone, telling it to rest of my friends through WhatsApp that I am having a great time with this friend here. Truth is, we hardly talked when we met. If this isn’t a communication barrier, then what is? Well, I feel social media has somehow made us all less social. We are so busy talking to the rest of the world that we forget the person sitting next to us.
Manners of meeting and greeting are fast vanishing with this superfast mode of communication. People get so carried away with Facebook world that they start judging through it. My friend said, “Did you see that classmate of ours, she has been going around the whole world. What are we doing?”
Believe it or not, these updates are sometimes intimidating, depressing and sometimes they make you anxious. Hold on! Nobody shares a photo of their fights or bad days on the Facebook world. The real world is definitely different. In the virtual world people want to get noticed, to be talked about, to make their presence felt. What misguides them is the feeling of not having something which the other person has.
Sometimes for getting that perfect picture to be shared on Facebook, we forget to even taste the food at the right temperature. Just for those “likes,” wows and many compliments, why would you eat a melted ice-cream? Why would you ignore a person sitting next to you and chat with someone miles away from you? It is sometimes better to take a step back and breathe.
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