Technology in the 21 st century has become a universal factor for human beings. The modern technology has become obsessed with elements such as computers, phones, and tablets which people use to communicate and share information. One such area where technology has changed the lives of people is through social media. Social media has transformed the way people communicate and interact with each other. There are currently many social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Whatsapp, where people interact with each other and share information. The benefits of social media are that it has made communication easy and reduced the time required for people to share information. However, social media has not come without negative impacts as people are put in a threatening situation of getting addicted and losing real-life interactions. Social media has made people less social through the loss of interactions in real life as people turn to faster and easier ways of interaction through social media.
One way that social media has made people less social in real life situation is through its addictive nature. People have become more into their computers and other electronic devices that they pay very little attention to conversation and interaction with friends ( Anderson & Jiang , 2018). Even in the middle of face to face conversation, people seem to be more glued to their devices, and this sends a message that people sending messages on the other side are more important than the ones in face to face conversation. Rather than focusing on the social face to face interactions, people tend to be addicted to their gadgets, chatting with friends who are away and makes a face to face interaction seem less important. Sometimes in the middle of a conversation. People get interrupted with social media messages and draw their attention away from the real-life conversation. As people become more accustomed to interruption and inability to have a meaningful conversation, focused conversations begin to weaken, the real-life of people have begun to mimic the shallow kind of social media relationships.
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Social media has also made people less social by reducing the need to go out with friends and find out about their lives or making a visit to a friend’s place to see how they are doing. Before the social media era, people used to go out with friends or visit them to find out more about their lives. This provided an avenue for a deeper conversation with each other in a way that promotes social interactions ( Anderson & Jiang , 2018). However, social media has changed this as people can find more about their friends through Facebook or Whatsapp without necessarily making a real human contact or conversation. People no longer see the need to converse with each other on a face to face contact because social media does that for them. The coffee shops and canteens have turned into non-social places where people sit, and everyone is concentrating on their phones, checking a message from a friend, yet they ignore the real conversation with people around them. It is common to go to a public place and find no one conversing with each other because everyone is glued to their phones.
In conclusion, social media has become a threatening factor in human conversation and social interaction in real sense. While many may view social media as a tool that increases social interaction, that view only camouflages the reality that social media has a shallow kind of relationships. It is putting people away from going to have a meaningful conversation with friends and enjoying a good time together.
Reference
Anderson, M., & Jiang, J. (2018). Teens, social media & technology 2018. Pew Research Center , 31 , 2018.
