Disconnect to Connect

We live in world where we are connected 24/7 to people all around the world, without any sense of time and distance. Information is provided about anything and everything within seconds. A friend, family member or colleague can be reached at any time of the day. Yet we are so disconnected from each other.

When was the last time you actually had a real, deep conversation with a friend? When was the last time you actually sat in a family gathering without constantly checking your instagram or snap chat? When was the last time you actually listened to someone without being distracted by your phone within minutes. Has human connection become a privilege in the world of social media?

It has almost become an addiction; smartphones have made social media so accessible that we are literally forgetting the reality of our own lives. Now, when it comes to social media, it has many positive aspects, such as information is easily accessible, people can work from anywhere, it is easier to communicate with friends and family. However, it has diluted the quality and depth in our relationships.

It is so common to see people in restaurants, newly married couples or families, just sitting on one table but constantly staring in their phones and not saying a word while eating. To me, this is just sad.

I notice that social media has created an illusion that we are connected but who are we connected to? Who do we post so many pictures on instagram for? Who do we post constant snaps for? Who are these people? Do you know them? Does it even matter what they think about your life details? Is our life just a reality show?

It seems like we have merged private sphere with public. We don’t see the value and beauty of actually living a moment. We just live to capture the moment. We are missing the whole point of time spent with family and friends. And I say ‘we’ because I too, was once part of such an addictive social life. I had to consciously pull myself out of it.

It was one day that I was sitting with a close friend in a coffee shop in UK, while she was constantly busy on her phone, replying her emails, checking her messages and snapchats that I realized how distant she is from me. I was angry and frustrated. I felt like she was physically present, but mentally in a different world. Ironically, I felt like I was perhaps closer to this friend while we were not physically in the same space and just connected through messages.

It was an eye-opening thought. In this moment, I realized being in someone’s presence means being with them fully and consciously. Social media and smartphones are taking this sense of closeness and human connection out of our lives. We are just robots pretending to play this game of being connected through technology. While actually, we are just disconnected.

You can’t relate with people and their stories anymore, because you don’t hear when they talk, or feel what they feel because to do that you would have to be fully present in the moment.

People are not making memories anymore; they are just taking pictures. They don’t relate any feelings or experiences with these pictures because the focus was just on sharing and uploading these pictures. In a way, the new generation is more concerned about what people may say about their posts, popularity, the number of likes rather than the content itself.

I have noticed even on social mediums like Twitter which is used to share thoughts, opinions and outlet for intellectual discussions, people tend to just post for the sake of it. In real life, you find that they seldom follow what they may preach. Is social media making our generation more vain and self-obsessed? Are we saying things just for the sake of saying them? I feel our words have lost the value or weight that generations before us had. Wisdom has become another promotional strategy and inspirational words are the new marketing.

‘We are drowning in information while starving for wisdom’.

Relationships and friendships have become superficial, people cannot connect with each other anymore. You can easily hide or escape your emotions by drowning yourself in the virtual world available at your hands. People don’t deal with problems anymore because it is so easy to run away from them. The quality of emotions is decreasing and losing value, because the expression of these emotions is being lost. We constantly complain about lack of time but it is because we are wasting so much time living in a virtual world. We are absent from our own lives.

My main intention behind this post is to raise questions, to encourage youth to re-think their actions when it comes to social media, re-think how much time has to be spent on social media and the re-evaluate the quality of your real life relationships. Are you wasting your time on social media or are you really benefitting from it? Are you really connected with your friends or family or do you need to disconnect in order to connect?

Photo from:

http://www.universityexpress.co.in/delhiuniversity/2014/03/8106/