Social Not-working

Online social networking-is it really social?

Global technological advancement happing in the world today encompasses enormous power, providing us various opportunities to bring about radical changes. A revolution in communication, Social networking is one such innovation that is bringing about unprecedented changes in our social behavior. Social networking is boom to an extend where we get to interact with far off people, whom we never could have interacted otherwise and spreading our word to the mass. It is a source of vast untapped potential and, if would  be leveraged effectively, could provide us with insurmountable options and opportunities in each and every section of our lives. 

Viral nature of the social networking platforms inherits massive potential to advertising our content to the public and corporate firms know how to make best use of this cache of opportunities. Internet marketing is getting a whole new definition where businesses are now finding word-of-mouse publicity much more effective and efficient than word-of-mouth publicity.

Now companies are also focusing on ‘crowd sourcing’ where instead of just couple of perspectives, they are harnessing the power of millions different ideas through the means of online platforms. Social networking has the capacity to revolutionize the current social structure in a way we’ve never seen before. But are we using all the capability been provided to use in the best possible way? 

“A mobile phone in your pocket right now has more computing power than all of NASA had in 1969.…NASA launched a man to the moon and what do WE do?…..We launch a bird into pigs”@moskovich. Social networking is one such example which lay among us heap of opportunities to make world a smaller place to live and bring people closer. But colossal source of power if not channeled in the right direction could be devastating as well. As we are getting more addicted to this astonishing innovation, slowly we are creating ourselves a nihilistic virtual world, in which our very existence would become pointless. So the question we now pose is does online social networking is really making us more social? 

Creating a virtual image of ourselves, bragging it with much of the fake information and when done with that, keep peeping into other’s phoney life…..we feel so social when our whole image online is nothing but just some electrical charges given a fancy visual shape and color. Burying ourselves deep into myriad of electronic gadgets, we have carefully constructed ourselves a closed garden, much like a sim-city, where our whole identity has taken a shape of electronic signals. We feel more secure and harmless interacting with each other through that media but…it do lack one of the most basic and important ingredient which makes us very human.

Social networking is slowly taking over face-to-face communication, as people prefer expressing themselves online. Communication has become rapid, but at the cost of personal interaction. You can just talk to someone over internet for years but that would still not be compared to sitting in front of that person and not saying a word. Feelings expressed in a hand written note can never be translated through emoticons : | ....These online sites, though, are powerful as they help us to manage and map out our relationships, but too much obsession has thrown us away from its very purpose- we interact but do we really connect?!! 

Now all we do is broadcast our personalities online by publishing thoughts, photos and videos…and then expect people to respond and acclaim it. This continuous self-promotion and then incessant need of public acceptance to our every action is shadowing the sole purpose of social networking......The rush of nostalgia when you find an old friend on ‘Facebook’ can be quite heady and exciting. But we’ve moved a long way to those feelings and now all we crave for is comments & applaud on everything we do, by everyone we know, to keep feeding into this abysmal hunger of elevating our self-esteem in the society.  

Social networking has already penetrated deep into our lives, accepting that is completely on one’s wish. With more than 1 billion users, now every 6th individual on this planet has an account on ‘facebook’ which clearly shows how social networking sites have proliferated nearly every nook and cranny of our lives. 

Power of social networking is still untamed and need to be cultivated to reap more benefits. With world entering into 21st century, we are also ushering ourselves into the amazing era of prosperity and development where power of social networking is going to be unlimited, restricted only by one’s imagination and efforts. Till then social networking sites are just an unexploded ticking time bomb, waiting to go off. Will it refurbish or destroy our society, that only time will tell.