The society today is Too Busy for Real face to face Interactions
The internet has become the new interaction platform for many people. This is where many people spend most of their time chatting with their perceived online ‘friend’. People have neglected real life associations and connections with the people around them all because they do not see term them as convenient for their busy lifestyles. What most people however fail to understand is that online friendships cannot really be compared to real life friendships. The internet has negative psychological impacts on people as it leaves them with no social lives causing them to live depressive lone lives.
In his article ‘Facebook in a Crowd’, Niedzviecki experiences the true nature of online friendships. He was happy about having 700 Facebook friends and felt like his life was perfect. For him, having so many friends was an accomplishment and this is what happens with many people in the society today. People manage to have so many online friends that are available any time of the day to chat with, that they see this as an accomplishment and neglect the real life friends that they have. Niedzviecki illustrates in his story that he no longer had friends to hang out with because they had grown apart due to work, family and even social media that took up most of his free time.
With the tough economy, people in contemporary society are always busy working trying to make ends meet. It is a common occurrence for an individual to choose work over going out with friends and their families. These are people that decide to even carry their work back home to work on it at night and still wake up very early the next day to go to work. Such an individual has no free time for themselves or for the people around them because all they do is work. This affects their social lives causing them to live lonely lives and it destruct their relationships with the people that are close to them. The people that have families are even more affected when it comes to social interactions because the free time that they have after work is used up on family. Someone that is working and have children has very limited time for social life if any, this individual have dual responsibility of going to work and finding time for his or her children. A bridge is hence created between them especially if the friends are people who have no families and hence would never understand the importance of family time.
People that do not have real friendships mean that they have poor social skills and they fear face to face interactions. A good illustration of this is with Niedzviecki’s story where he decides to make the online friendship a reality by creating a Facebook event, where he invited all his 700 friends on Facebook to meet up for a chat and drinks. He was all excited about the event because for him, this was an opportunity to have a real chat with his new friends. It was however a surprise for him to see that only fifteen people that confirmed their attendance. What was even more surprising is the fact that only one member attended the event, an illustration of the fear that people in the modern ‘Facebook’ world have of face to face interactions.
Social media has changed the concept of communication and interactions among people. Social media is being used as a shield where people can take up any personality that they want, something that they are not able to do in real life. There are those people that are very good at chatting and they are not scared to speak their minds while behind their social media accounts. People presume that other people cannot judge them as long as they do not know them and so social media is the perfect life for them.
An illustration of how social media has affected people’s social skills is with the case of Niedzviecki and his interaction with Paula. He was tense and did not know how to be himself, something that made their interaction to be awkward. The behaviour of Niedzviecki is just an illustration of how people have lost their social interaction skills because of social media. People in the modern society tend to be more focused on impressing others and are always conscious about the concept of being judged.
The society no longer believes in people having different unique personalities, everyone is expected to behave in a certain way. If a person behaves otherwise, then they are given labels and this is what has motivated the increased growth of online friendships as opposed to face to face interactions. In social media, one can be who they want to be, without always looking over their shoulder at what the society is saying about them. Social media has become the trusted platform for making friendships even though these are friendships that do not have any significant effects on an individual’s life.
