Socializing through the net: some thoughts

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 A couple of days ago I received a funny mail. I was one of those many who were forwarded this mail. I was about to mark it as ‘junk’. But I decided not to ,after I read the content. It was about addiction to social networking sites. Some few lines which caught my attention are as follows:

“A twenty-something man was prone on the floor, his face buried in his hands, while a curly-haired woman comforted him.
"Don't worry. It'll be all right."
"I just don't understand it. I thought my update was LOL-worthy, but none of my friends even clicked the 'like' button."
"How long has it been?"
"Almost five minutes. That's like five months in the real world."
..............................................
"When did you realize that your Facebooking might be a problem?"
"I realized it last Sunday night, when I was on Facebook and saw a message on my wall from my husband: 'I moved out of the house five days ago. Just thought you should know.'"
"What did you do?"
"What else? I unfriended him of course!"

I laughed my heart out because many a times I get “addicted” to my status messages just like this. But no wonder, even I too had smelt messy situations in my social networking world ………..well well, yes I am supposed to not to indulge in these addictions, but I am a human and we are not infallible. I felt I must share my thoughts on this.

Very recently I was minutely scrutinizing the Facebook terms and conditions. A particular awareness tip of Facebook caught my eyes. The inherent message that it conveyed was, there could be risks in internet socializing even if you “lock” your own data. I felt this was an eye-opener for many active participants of social networking sites. Many a times people take to  Facebook, Orkut, email inboxes etc, as ‘addictions’ to come out of the solitariness. The virtual profile gives a special comfort when user gets to see many “humane” messages. No wonder, many of them are machine generated, many senders do not actually intend to comfort the receiver but try to make their own points highlighted. But many users feel that these actually fill up the emptiness. The problem begins there. The communication, the activity, the ‘supposed human gathering’ compels one to be involved. Eagerness to view the next message and even answering some of the messages becomes an ‘urge’ and this fails even a very rational brain.

Besides numbers of health hazards involved in the issue of addiction to social networking, there are numbers of other hazards that line up . Obviously one may face depression, withdrawal symptoms and this may essentially lead to no productivity in workplace and a tainted name in the society. I have gone through numbers of scholarly articles which made me to realize this hard truth.

True, these virtual profiles can be great ego boosters. But the hard truth is you need to be ‘awake’.

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