Social Sites: Are they Really Bridging People?

With the birth of a gazillion SNS and other internet communication sites and programs, I sometimes think that we are getting less and less interactive in our real lives. The main purpose why web programmers built this amazing sites is to let people be updated with their friends and family from around the globe—who’s dating who, who’s getting married and who’s still aren’t, how’s the business doing and etc. But at the current phase of interaction most of us are getting, I’m not so sure if really, that purpose has been served properly. And I question myself: Have we taken advantage of these inventions the way that it needs to be consumed? It’s alarming because I know that the answer to that question is no.

In my family, I have 3 younger brothers. The eldest of them three is now in college; the other two are both in high school and all of them are very much glued to the internet. After school, instead of checking, studying their lessons and doing their home works, they go out and spend a massive 4-7 hours playing in the internet café. And when they go home, they’re pretty much tired and would immediately go to sleep—if they’re not hungry enough to eat first. There’s no interaction, no how’s-your-day and you-know-what conversation.

 And it’s not just that. When I was in college, I use to “hang out” with friends. Hanging out means sitting in a bench with our laptops on and just doing whatever we want to do without bothering to have a single conversation with our friends, and they’re just beside us. There’s also this time when we IMed each other even if were just a few meters away. It’s like we’ve turned into this robot who can only communicate with each other with the use of some technology. And these gadgets are taking over our lives!

With all these SNS sprouting every day, we find ourselves greeting our friends with over Facebook, Twitter, G+, without having the sense of privacy—most of them post their greetings publicly for everyone to see. Emails are good but no, we want it to be read by everybody. Hell, we can even call them if we want to. I even have friends in Facebook who changes their relationship status every single week—which is very much annoying. Why make your private life public? With what’s happening now, there’s no private life anymore. It’s all publicized in a not so good way. And cyber crimes are rising, much more so than the previous years. We hear rapes (luring women and deceiving them to meet somewhere and then rape them), identity theft, sex scandals and other horrible stuffs. I don’t understand why we stoop down to that level. I just don’t.

I had this sudden realization months ago that’s why I decided to restrict my accounts—photos, status updates, etc and decided that I will no longer accept friend requests from people I don’t know. It’s not just about totally avoiding your socializing over the internet but I think it’s a matter of limiting it to what’s acceptable, proper, and right. I have come to the conclusion that social networking sites are good if use in a proper way and when it’s not, it’s tearing everybody apart, including our own families.