Showing posts with label Facebook. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Facebook. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

How many of us give a real answer to this question when asked across a computer screen?

Though these results can’t be extrapolated to draw conclusions about the Indian situation, one can’t deny the dependence on digital socialising that surely has changed the nature of social interactions. “I am quite a regular on Facebook thanks to my daughter. I’ve traced several old friends through this network. We’re in touch through e-mails, but then meeting personally as regularly as you e-mail is definitely different. Visiting a profile page isn’t as real as visiting your friend’s home and therefore, his or her life. Half our stories are told by the setting and the mood of our houses. Personal interactions build trust and comfort. In digital interactions, the veil always remains. In those ‘only positive’ digital discussions, there isn’t much room for discussing the grey areas of life and that’s why this sense of disconnect and a feeling of lack of real friends,” suggests 52-year-old Kanika Wali, a homemaker, from her personal experiences.

While inept use of great technology can still be blamed for creating a social disconnect among its users, similar rationalisation by psychologists for lack of empathy in present generation seems short-sighted. This hypothesis ignores that they grew up with abundant resources, undivided attention and constant protection. Perhaps, it will still take the world a while to realise that screen interactions (for now) can only help in finding long-lost friends and sharing memories, and not in creating new stories!




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Monday, August 13, 2012

Losers blog...

Losers use the net more, and blog

From illegal downloads of movies and music, to free access to pornographic and tendentious material (even information on how to build bombs), technology advancement – while creating new age entrepreneurs – has also done to death many innovative ideas apart from criminally promoting anti-social concepts, products and behaviour. Illegal downloads are one part of it (the movie Avatar being the latest victim, like innumerable others), what cuts the waste deeper is anonymous/falsified blogging, tweeting and social profile usage on sites like MySpace, Facebook, Orkut and others.

While on one hand, these and many other social profiling sites have generated mass hype (viral marketing, if you may) as being the next ‘big thing’ on the Internet, on the other hand, not only have these sites promoted slanderous and defamatory posting of content by anonymous users, they have also gone ahead to claim that they cannot be taken to task over such content being posted by anonymous users as they (the sites) support freedom of speech! But things are changing. Countries like China, Iran and others have in one shot brought erstwhile know-all search engines like Google to their knees. India even arrested and jailed the CEO of an auction portal (owned by e-Bay.com), which hosted pornographic content under similar irreverent premises of non-responsibility. A National Institute of Mental Health supported research proved that increased use of the net was associated “with decreased family communication and reduced size of local social circle,” apart from loneliness and increased depression. Consequences? In UK, in March 2010, a 33 year old was jailed after admitting to kidnapping, raping and murdering the teenager he met on Facebook using a fake Facebook profile.


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