Why Technology And Social Media Are Ruining Our Relationships (And How We Can Put A Stop To It)
All of our connections have become more virtual than real these days.
Kev Costello via Unsplash Technology is quickly becoming a remarkably essential element of our daily lives.
Today, it has completely taken over our lives, we use it for every tiny matter, and it has without any reservations, permanently revolutionized how we keep in contact with the rest of the world.
The situation has shifted even more significantly for somebody who uses social media sites continuously throughout the day.
On the surface, these people seem to be very successful and active with a ton of friends and supporters.
Sadly, most of them have never and presumably will never meet each other in real life or even speak on the phone.
Still, they communicate with many of those people on a daily basis, but only a very few of those are part of their real lives.
Not to name, many of us prefer to share the most private and confidential details of our personal lives on a public stage.
This practice is gradually becoming more of the new style of socializing, decreasing earlier held notions of secrecy, safety, and private space.
One can demonstrate that there are many gains to doing all this, still, there are many outcomes that one must keep in mind.
We need to investigate the kind of impact this has made on our daily lives and how we socialize with one another.
The way we discover new people for friendships and relationships has radically transformed.
Online matchmaking sites have grown into the new standard of how people find someone for a possible new relationship or even a life partner.
This has become very popular for young professionals who are out of university, but not yet settled into family life.
The main purpose being that, such people, have insignificant possibilities to reach new people, besides at their workplaces, which is often professional.
In today’s hectic modern life, some individuals find that the most natural way to meet someone special or even someone to have fun with is from one of the online social media sites.
Satirically, these people relax at home and presume to meet someone exciting without having ever to leave the luxury of their sofa.
The manner in which we interact and chat with others has transformed as well.
In the process, we overlook how we used to have real discussions and communicate with others more communicatively.
The truth is that we may even be missing the stamina to unveil our powerlessness, which is the main factor in forming deep or significant relationships.
Instead of confronting our shortcomings or admitting those of others, we are often perceived guilty of falling for our own online alternative artificial self-esteem and fascination over the almost flawless, but false personality.
And what we are overlooking is that one of our most fundamental needs as a human being is to have a real physical human touch and passion with others.
On the flip side, there are also some positives for this technological innovation.
The social media sites have resulted in building more openness and multifariousness, an option to communicate differently, to be attached with other like-minded personalities, to interact with different perspectives, and to unseal regularly held restrictions to promote positive secular activism.
With typewriting words on a digital screen as the dominant form of communication, the rules of our language have also gone through an abbreviated reconstruction.
Such abbreviations have become how we have accustomed ourselves to type as little as feasible and they make very scarce to no sense at all to the earlier generation.
These text messages may look like a unique script or maybe even a foreign language to some of us who are not pinned on to social media or texting.
Or one may dispute against naming it the modern-day song of its own genus, the one that only the social media savvy can follow.
The amount of time we spend in conversations has not really developed, but the way we interact has shifted radically.
There is very little actual talking in person or over the phone, over a glass of something to drink, or perhaps a game of cards.
Most of the time, the way we interact today is done through text messaging, either through our phones or via one of the social media platforms.
Most of us are sinful of sending a short text message, rather than meeting the person in real life or even going to the phone to have an actual discussion with an associate or family member.
The smart gadgets have given all of us the internet in our pods.
Most people have mobile phones these days and swift passage to the internet whenever they require, making it more accessible than ever before to continually remain in touch, notwithstanding of where they are or what they are doing.
On the other side, the regular access and existence of smartphones has produced a somewhat fantasy that we are all always accessible at any time of the day or the night with just a swipe of a button.
This puts an unbelievable amount of weight on us with almost no real individual time when we can be actually away from our phones.
It does not matter if we are operating from home or if we are ill or if we are just not in the state for immediate enjoyment.
We can never be genuinely relaxing or unwinding, at least not in the intended sense of the word.
We get irrationally anxious when a loved one doesn’t respond to our text message or email nearly right away.
We get tensed about why that person didn’t acknowledge, if they are doing okay, if they are ill, if they are in some problem, if they are angry with us, etc., etc.
Of course, the real reasonableness is, however, that they may belong to a group of people who have not yet been absorbed in by the gyre of the online world.
Or perhaps, they have turned off their phone to do something real in their so-called implicitly real life.
Things get a little more sensitive when it comes to talking with our significant other.
The most interesting fact is that this is not about how we interact with our mate when we are away from each other.
It is absolutely fine to send a text message during the day just to check on our loved ones or ask or tell them something meaningful and technology has, in fact, enhanced the affection in our relationship as it has permitted us to be continuously hooked on to each other regardless of where we are at any given point in time.
The unfortunate element is when we text our mate to ask them if they want salt or pepper when they are actually resting in the other part of the same room or the next one.
This is how technology has slithered into the ribs of our everyday lives.
The key rests in finding a wholesome balance between how technology can enhance our lives and how it can destroy it.
The tech titans are the ones who invented this and they are the ones who must teach and build consciousness about how new technology can make our lives simpler rather than more obscure.
And how we can create relevant barriers that allow the technology effect to be more positive than negative and ways in which we can update our present relationships with ourselves and of course, with other people in our life.
There are so many startups that are launching websites where the younger and even the older generation can potentially connect with other like-minded people from all over the world, one such site is ispace1 network to find new friends, love, romance, relationships, dating, affairs, and more.
These kinds of portals are slowly becoming the new norm for how people connect with others and this new trend is only going to become increasingly popular in the coming years.
Punit Raja SuryaChandra is a writer who focuses on relationships, dating, and love. For more of her relationship content, visit her author profile on The Good Men Project.
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