The Effect of Social Media On Our Social Lives
The online world is vastly powerful in the way that it can connect hundreds of thousands of individuals all around the globe in an instant. A tremendous amount of these connections are established on the web’s most widely known social media platforms. These applications such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and several others provide many of the same functions: direct messaging, the ability to upload pictures and videos, the potential to voice your own thoughts and opinions to an audience of your choosing, and more. Sure, we can do most of these things in real life, but if social media allows you to perform these actions with less exerted effort then why not take advantage of it? What social media entails though, may actually be taking advantage of us. The way we interact with each other and perform tasks in our daily lives after the introduction of social media is substantially different from that of generations before. Social media platforms are not enhancing our social lives, but rather limiting their potential.
One way in which our social lives are not enhanced by such platforms is the fact that we are constantly distracted by them and tend to ignore the real world right in front of us. The rise of social media came with new ways to interact with others without physically having to face them. Communication today is not only limited to real world interactions but is used in more prevalent ways including texting, trading disappearing photos like those on Snapchat, even live streaming. Though we are still technically in touch with each other, we are stripped of real world experiences which are of greater value to our being. When out at dinner, seeing a table of lit up faces is not a rare sight. These faces may not be lit up with joy, but with blue light elicited from a phone screen. Hanging out with friends usually entails one person or another texting mid-conversation. It is evident that there ought to be at least one person scrolling through Facebook while sitting in a movie theater. Our social lives are taking off during events such as these as we are surrounded by living, breathing beings who have the ability to communicate. So why ignore that fact and choose to place a synthetic connection above a genuine one? Being one hundred percent absorbed in the world in front of us rather than in our online worlds gives us a heightened sense of appreciation for the now and elevated social experiences.
Individuals are also distracted from the real world in the way that some events are purposely missed out on for the sake of being able to catch up on them later. Most things that take place in one’s life are documented. Special family gatherings, parties, and presentations can all be displayed for people to view at their leisure on social media platforms. This may be a courtesy, but it defeats the purpose if an individual is able to live through the event in real time. Our social lives would be at a greater advantage if things were experienced first-hand which would create moments to be remembered rather than visuals to be forgotten on social media platforms.
Another reason why social media does not lead to the enhancement of our social lives is the fact that we are progressively getting worse at interpersonal communication. Communication is one of, if not the most, important aspects in our lives. Having a personal experience with someone in real life helps us expand our social skill set. Simple things like eye contact, expressing emotion, and perceiving facial expressions are all factors that do not contribute to communication among social media. In today’s world, most people have a greater feeling of comfort when speaking over text or direct messages rather than face to face or even over the phone. To some it may be easier to text their boss and request to take off than it is to ask in person. Years ago people were forced to speak to each other directly no matter how awkward the situation would cause them to feel or how much they did not want to do it. Despite the potential feeling of discomfort, these face to face interactions are more beneficial to our social lives as they allow for growth and set us up for success in communicating in the future. Social media provides a way around these physical conversations but does not prepare us for the need of verbal communication that will have to be met on a daily basis. Social media provides us with a feeling of closeness but it does not equate to the real thing. Gaining a less effective variation of this feeling among platforms demolishes the chance of experiencing a deep, personal connection. If all it takes to elicit a response out of someone is a simple Facebook post or a one hundred and forty character tweet, then why bother going the extra mile to speak with someone in person? Do we actually want to speak to each other or would we rather interact with our keyboards and a screen? The increase in favor of technological communication leads to a lessened importance of that interpersonal connection, proving that our social skills are declining, not being enhanced.
Lastly, being an active user of such platforms may lead to an increase in social pressures faced by the user, hindering their social life. Social pressures can be compared to a competition. In this case, pressures among social media users may be to see who has the most exciting life or who is receiving the most attention on a certain post. Say someone sees an Instagram post of a peer who seems to be living what could only be a perfect life. This creates a fear of missing out for the viewer, leading them to want to do more with their own life. What they decide to do may be out of character as they feel it is what others want to see and not actually what they want to do. If an individual is worried about how others will perceive their life, it may take away their sense of self and limit the extent of their social experiences. Living an artificial version of one’s life does not enhance it, but make for a less evolved being.
On the other hand, one might say that social media does in fact enhance our actual social lives by allowing us to communicate with people all around the world, broadening our social lens and affecting the way we act in certain situations. Yes, social media does permit anyone from anywhere to come in contact with someone on the opposite side of the world, showing us new perspectives and in return forcing us to act on them in our daily routines, but there are other ways to go about enhancing this aspect of our lives. You can be in touch with the world in ways that do not involve searching through Twitter Moments. Before the digital age that introduced smartphones, people had to get their news from somewhere. Whether it was by watching televised news, listening to the radio, or reading books, people found ways to become informed and created and shared their own opinions. Even without social media platforms, getting in touch with people from around the globe would not be as difficult as it seems and would not eliminate communication entirely.
Within recent years, it has become hard to imagine what the world would be like without social media. What if we had yet to advance in the technological field and were still living each day like it was 2005 – a year where Twitter and Instagram had yet to exist. Our focus on the now may be prevalent rather than fading away, interpersonal communication may still be going steadily rather than declining, and leading carbon-copied lives may not be trending. Our social lives have without a doubt been affected by social media; they have not been so much enhanced, but restricted.
