It's Complicated

I'm sitting hear talking with friends, browsing Facebook, and texting people. All of these social interactions are done with little effort on my part. In this digital age we live in it's easy to have a social life and still be disconnected from people. That's why it's so simple to just add people online even though you don't know them or add people that you've just met. Once you're "friends" online you can pretty much give up on any other social interactions unless you want to. We live in a time where your social life is gauged by how many people like your photos or how many friends you have. Not to undermine those things but is it really worth it? Do we really value people the same way when we don't have to put the effort into the relationship? 

In class our presenters for the day did an experiment, they set up fake profiles online and tried to add people in our class. While some didn't add them, others did, even though they had no idea who they were. This idea of becoming friends with someone you don't know is very intriguing. It's a trap almost everyone falls into, you meet someone at a party or through friends and then you add them on Facebook and then can stalk them until you know everything about them before or right after you've met. Our online profiles have become and extension of who we are and how we connect with others. I've done it, my friends have done it, even my parents have done it. But does that make it okay? We're losing connections to people and aren't really getting to know anyone because we think who they portray themselves to be online is their genuine self.

A few months ago a friend of mine posted online about how she wished that people would be more open about their problems or setbacks on Facebook, instead of just posting happy things all the time. While this seems like a good idea, it still doesn't help people to connect and talk about real things with people. Instead it gives everyone more of an opportunity to cop out of actually caring, they can just like the status or comment about how they hope things get better. If we really want to see things change we need to get offline and go out to make genuine connections with people. In order to show we care we need to invest time in people and relationships.