Night- 11.30 pm...After a long tiring day, I finally lie down in bed, ready to fall asleep...but the thought of something keeps me awake and I check my mobile ,again for some new notifications...not finding anything I keep it aside and try to sleep.
Afternoon- 12.30 PM: As I gulp down my lunch in the office breakroom,I look at my mobile screen to see if there are any new notifications in whatsapp or facebook. Not seeing any new notifications, i quietly eat my lunch and get back to work.
Few instances like the above makes me think is my social life limited to only facebook updates, posts or whatsapp messages? Am I no one when these are not part of my life? Does my everyday happiness, involvement with outside world only based on these? Is this vague connectivity the only window I have to the world?
Questions are many but answers are none.How drastically our lives have changed in the last few years that we have become puppets to social media. We dress up and pose only to post our pictures on social media, we go to restaurants and dinner is incomplete until a check in comes in, we watch movies but hey the world needs to know about this, we laugh,we cry, we try every detail has to be posted.And to tell the truth, we enjoy reading all the updates our friends post and when we ourselves post something, we track down who has liked them and who has not.This is what life is all about nowadays.I remember the days when my parents used to inform me about my cousin going to a new school or my neighbor buying a new car. Nowadays even though I am more than 10,000 miles away from home,I am usually the first one to know,even before my parents,courtesy social media.Even gossip changed it's form over the years. Earlier it was based on some thing someone said or something some one wore to a party but now we need not even wait fo that because everything people do are there for all others to see and so friends may be seating in different corners of the world yet gossip about a classmate who wore that horrifying dress and posted a picture of herself!
So far,so good. But the point is,what is the limit? where do we stop and who decides the threshhold? We do not need moral guardians for facebook updates...but aren't we ourselves supposed to gauge the limit and stop well within time? But social media is like a casino, you know you are going to lose but still you keep playing...such is the attraction,such is the madness which explains my two situations above. We are now so addicted to this way of life that we forgot our real hobbies. Whenever we are not busy in office or home, unconsciously we are gazing at our facebook wall, twitter account or whatsapp groups.These are supposedly useful to connect to the world but at this rate, they are actually making us distant from our true selves. We believe that people lead a life according to their pictures and status updates which are not true parameters to measure happiness.We want to emaculate them and forget who we actually are.
Anyways let us wait and watch how our lives change in next few years and whether or not we survive this storm. For now I am going back to check my mobile !!
