The forms of Social Media have improved. How about our relationships with people?

The advent of Internet has changed people's lives tremendously. The role it has played on globalisation is significant and we are now living in an era where information becomes easily accessible and international communications much easier and faster. If i would list down the various applications of internet - IRC, ICQ, YAHOO MESSENGER, MSN, SKYPE, FRIENDSTER, YOUTUBE, YAHOO GROUPS, FACEBOOK, & the most recent TWITTER, these platforms have been used by us to connect with our friends and strangers in one way or the other. These applications have injected and redefined new social networking lifestyles we lead at a particular point of time. The level of interest is also directly proportionate to the extent of media buzz & hype created about that application. More often than not, the application is like a bubble phenomenon. It come and go fast. Take ICQ for example, I used to treat it as an application to talk to friends online. Hmm, 6-7 years back? Where is ICQ now?

My point is - the applications & sophistication of social media has indeed improved through new innovations and interventions by the IT researchers and programmers. While we so willingly subscribe to these social media lifestyles, let's not forget that at the end of the day, these platforms are meant for us to improve our real life relationships with friends & relatives. We should not be coiled or stucked in the social media realm - in search of real relationships - but still find ourselves unable to attain breakthrough in how we conduct our day to day interactions and relationships with people.

A virtual self can only bring us so far. The innate desire to connect with real souls and lives can only be satisfied through our day to day interactions and communications with people we love and care.

Hence, while we are heavily invested in our social media virtual lifestyle, let's remain mindful that these social platforms are just an extension of our daily lives. To indulge and dwell into it without investing time to build real relationships, is dire and might have a dangerous impact on our lives. We should make use of IT applications to improve our lives and not let it have control over us.

So we need to ask ourselves this question - while we see the various IT applications improving over the years, are we leveraging on it to improve our real life relationships? If you find that you are still socially handicapped after so many years, is the social networking websites & applications really helping or are they deterring you from improving & moving further in your life?

Think about it!

Dennis T