The Debate (no.49); Friends Family and Social Media

Do you feel closer to your friends and family because of social media, or do you think it keeps you apart?

True friendship true family is one that truly connects with you they bond with you and they're interested in you as much as you're interested in them.

The question is that we use social media now as a gathering point, for you now pretending that we got a lot of friendships when we really don't because we're not connected to those people in the manner to which a friendship should be connected.

We're connected through data Analysis in the sky but that is meaningless. It's got no value to it whatsoever and might give you some internal feelings of belonging but they're very superficial and artificial to that degree.

How often do you use your phone or computer to talk to people compared to meeting them in person?

Meeting people has become very difficult for me because my acquaintances stay far away from me and even sometimes manage to meet them on some social occasion or get together. I don't talk to anybody over the phone and get connected over whatsapp. If I don't get a whatsapp message from someone for more than two days I usually call and try to inquire about him. Two of my friends regularly call me up to talk while they are driving.

Can technology help us make new friends, or does it mainly connect us with people we already know?

Friends are different from acquaintances and colleagues and neighbors and all that other stuff right. So you know social media has presented the term friends as everybody but that's not true there's multiple levels of relationships much before we get to a friendship.

Our so-called friends jump on and they connect with you so you know if we want to call it a connection and they see your interests ,they see what you like, they see how you are and how they react to , how they respond to it whether they write messages back or they actually make the effort to connect with that really defines whether there is a potential bond or not and again a bond is about developing a solid foundation of a relationship.

So focus on the ones that you know are connecting with you if you're using social media a lot. I'd encourage you to marginalize it. Don't use it as a collection of friendships because you're going to be sadly mistaken .

Get out there and interact personally with people and have face-to-face conversations and develop healthy relationships and that's a dying thing nowadays but be very careful with accepting all these glorious friendships because they're really not friends and social media is the Billboard for displaying who you are and if you're doing it authentically and logistically then you're going to attract the people that have common interests with you and those are the ones you need to focus on the ones that don't interact with you or engage with you well they're just probably not interested and that's okay I mean there's eight billion people on this planet you can't be friends with all.

Have you ever felt lonely while using social media? Why do you think that happens?

Isolation vs loneliness are different. Loneliness is a subjective term it's a feeling that the connections that we need are different from the social connections that we have and in that gap we experience loneliness this is distinct from an objective measure.

Isolation for example is more of an objective reflection of the number of people you have around you but the reality is we know that you can have many many people around you and still feel quite lonely if you don't have strong connections with them if you don't feel you can show up as who you are and fully be yourselves.

Conversely you can just have one or two people around you but if you have a strong authentic open connection with them then you may not feel lonely at all. So it's all about the quality of the connection and actually what's going on at the moment.

How has technology changed the way we communicate with each other?

POSITIVE IMPACTS OF TECHNOLOGY ON COMMUNICATION	NEGATIVE IMPACTS OF TECHNOLOGY ON COMMUNICATION
TRACK ALL COMMUNICATION	NON-SOCIAL LIFE
REACHING A BROADER AUDIENCE	AN OMNIPRESENT DISTRACTION
FASTER AND EASE OF COMMUNICATION	TECHNOLOGY WEAKENS FAMILY RELATIONS
SPEED AND EFFICIENCY	YOU'RE LESS COMFORTABLE WITH NONDIGITAL CONVERSATIONS
IT CAN HELP OVERCOME DISABILITIES	UNLAWFUL USE AND ADDICTION TO TECHNOLOGY

Thank you for reading my post.

I would like to invite three fellow Steemians to participate in the contest
@chiagoziee
@eveetim
@georgitsachev