Smile vs a smiley

“Are you on Facebook or twitter?” is the first question you are asked if you are out to ‘win some friends and influence people.’ Say ‘No’ and you get a look telling you ‘man Stone Age has ended long back.’ A profile on the social networking sites like Facebook or Orkut has become more of an individual’s identity now.
Let’s not doubt that they have eased our ‘stay connected’ notion by offering us the most convenient, cost efficient and personalised tools for being in touch with friends and buddies irrespective of which part of the planet they are residing in. Their ability to cater to both text and audio-visual media make them all the more desirable and even a step ahead of the cell phones. And the best part, you get to remain in touch with one and all right from the couch you love to laze in. Just leave a ‘scrap,’ write what is in your mind or upload a photo or a video, your friends and associates react. Those witty and even silly remarks that make you smile, those words of encouragement to lift your spirits are all in there. No wonder, they (read social sites) are attracting millions, many of whom have integrated these sites into their daily practices. Even, corporates and others too are making social networks a focus of their marketing programs.
While the perks of this booming technology are undeniably attractive, something seems to be amiss with this virtual life as we continue to live parallel to the real life — that personal touch and sense of a companionship. The words on the screen don’t exude the same warmth as the voice or the presence of the person does. There is not patting of the shoulder, no warm hug or a loving kiss that sometime say more than a thousand words. Technology may have brought world at your fingertips but seems it has equally shrunk our emotions and in-person interface.
Sample this: Recently, I bumped into a friend, who just lives in the colony next to mine. I hadn’t seen him for months, and we tried to strike up a conversation. But since we follow each other on Twitter, are friends on Facebook and Orkut, the usually enjoyable conversation quickly turned awkward. Every major update to our lives, after all, had already been published online. Emotions apart, we minced words and felt hard to converse even for few minutes.
So aren’t social web sites ruining in-person conversation? Avik Ghosh, an admitted facebook addict, says yes. “Everyone reads my blog or sees my post so I run into hang-ups in conversation on phone. With so many voices now — among them email, texting, calls, blogs, comments and social web sites — it’s like we desperately need a conversation tracker to know who’s heard what and where before engaging in any discussion.”
What he remarks may sound funny yet highlights a serious point. Maybe, spending so much time socialising via communities isn’t good any more. Or may be, it’s becoming a risk, at least for some that they become so enmeshed in online life that it takes precedence over the complex interactions of the real world.
One who believes it is becoming a cause for concern is sociologist Aroona Broota. “I wonder whether real conversation in real time may eventually give way to these sanitised and easier screen dialogues, in much the same way as killing, skinning and butchering an animal to eat has been replaced by the convenience of packages of meat on the supermarket shelf,” she says, who claims to counsels many households who though live in a same house but don’t have time to eat, sit at leisure or discuss life together.
Broota gives a wider picture of how the society and family values has gradually changed over the period of time before reasoning in regard to the social networking sites: “There are several factors—socio-political, cultural, economic et al that determines the basis of a society. Earlier, there were over three generation of people who lived in a single family. So kids or the adults had one or the other to interact, learn and share things with. There was a lot of community and companion feeling. Then came the nuclear family system and presently we are living in a micro-nuclear family, where we are beginning to loose companionship, values, parental feeling et al. So, values are changing over a period of time and so are our sense of companionship and emotions as well.”
And this distancing with a family and friends leads to isolation and depression where you virtually claim to be connected through the digital world but are becoming isolated and secluded with the confines of your drawing room.
“No matter how close they (networked friends or acquaintance) live to you, what is the point? How can you see/hear how they are feeling? Barring the use of emoticons. There can be no physical contact, and as people get hooked to this, they become more and more withdrawn from the real world. It becomes a sick circle, where you even start to feel emotions towards the writing on the screen in front of you,” adds Broota.
Lata Vaidhyanathan, academician too air similar views: “Since when did people start having about five hundred plus friends on average? The world would be a much happier place, if having five hundred or so friends was a norm in this society. Better phrased, it is not the norm of the real society, but everything is virtually present in cyber space.”
Granted that virtual life has advantages from networking to voicing to communicating news and marketing for businesses. But experts say that the reason behind online world taking over the real world is because they allow users of the life desired than the type of life actually lived. It takes less effort to craft one’s desired image in the virtual world. Incidentally, this satisfaction along with other conveniences of social networks, translates an average user logging on a half-dozen times a day and spending hours per week living one’s virtual life — a life where finding a job, house, or a soul mate are all possible with a mere click.
“The trick to social network sites is to use its benefits to one’s advantage without crossing the fine line between virtual and real. But many often don’t realise when the line is crossed and life of living a virtual image cuts into the time one should actually be living a real life and talking to actual friends and family in person. Real life is existent and virtual life can easily be deleted with a mere click as easily as it was created,” says a techno-junkie and RJ Nitin.
The power and reach of social networks have increased exponentially in recent years with the massive growth in mobile networked devices. According to the comScore, Inc. a leader in measuring the digital world’s report social networking sites in India, finding that visitation to the site category increased 51 percent from the previous year to more than 19 million visitors in December 2008. The study stated that global social networking brands continued to gain prominence in India during the year, with Orkut, Facebook, hi5, LinkedIn and MySpace each witnessing significant increases in visitation.
Orkut reigned as the most visited social networking site in December 2008 with more than 12.8 million visitors, an increase of 81 percent from the previous year. Orkut’s audience was three times the size of its nearest competitor in the category. Facebook.com captured second position with four million visitors, up 150 percent vs year ago, followed by local social networking site Bharatstudent.com with 3.3 million visitors (up 88 percent) and hi5.com with two million visitors (up 182 percent). (The study excludes visits from public computers such as Internet cafes and access from mobile phones.)
Manish K Thakur a literary critic and former head of Sociology, at Jadhavpur University, sees it as a total the loss of solitude in our lives. Quite evident and as expected that technology is taking away our privacy and our concentration but it is also taking away our ability to be alone, he cautions. “We’re doing this to ourselves; we are discarding these riches as fast as we can.”
Experts opine that spending time alone gives us time to reflect and the space to think. It might be a structured act of solitude such as a religious retreat or meditation session or it might be in a less formal setting such as sitting in a drawing rooms or walking in the parks. But even there scarcely we find ourselves alone and carry mobile-connected device having all the times at all places.
Digital communication that was originally designed for instantly transporting information and displaying has become more than what one expected. And after becoming to this state, one forgets how to communicate properly in social life. Hence, this leads to that person becoming even more withdrawn, leading to depression, and lack of functionability among people.
“It is because creation of social networking sites, blogs — all take away from the original plot for life: physical social communication. They might keep you socially happy in the cyberspace, but in real life, virtual world harm people’s moral values, as they don’t allow time for compassion or admiration as the emotions linked to our moral sense awaken slowly in the mind. For some kinds of thought, especially moral decision-making about other people’s social and psychological situations, we need to allow for adequate time and reflection. Admiration and compassion-two of the social emotions that define humanity-take much longer,” says Broota.
Others argue that social web sites aren’t to blame for ruined conversations on their own merits. But as a collective part of an overly connected world, they’re certainly contributing to it. What’s more, social web sites and their related communication tools are increasingly being abused as replacements for the human touch, according to communication consultant and academician Abha Adams. She has a valid point when he says: “The Internet is to share information, not emotions.”
When asked if social web sites were spoiling verbal conversation, she says, “The idea of being present in the moment is disappearing. Oftentimes we devalue our current situation — the friends and family around us, our surroundings and setting — for something going on somewhere else, somewhere that seems far more interesting that what is right in front of us.”
Whatever be thoughts on this issue, no one can deny that social web sites have changed the way we communicate and subsequently converse in-person. But what fun is in-person conversation if all of life’s announcements were previously made public with keystrokes?
Experts on whether the social networking is the pernicious influence or whether it is the technological gift that supporters claim could alter the way human society evolves.
Inevitably, the answer will lie somewhere between these two extremes. “It’s like we need to teach people again about the value of friendship and the value of solitude,” says John Mathew, a lecturer at the School of Business Information Technology, Pune, with a particular interest in social media.
Still, there are others who think social networks enhance in-person conversation. Examples they indicate as: status updates, which can spur dialogue during in-person discussions later on. But it’s important to adapt one’s oral approach accordingly, or awkwardness can ensue.

Says Adams, “A benefit of the social media at present is the lack of intrusive demeaning advertisings. In two hours of watching television children are bombarded by advertisements that tell them they cannot be a success or popular unless they buy, wear, use or smear on themselves some product. We can also be thankful that on Facebook etc our children are not confronted with scenes of violence and immorality. Chatting with your friends via the internet is much more rewarding alternative than watching TV. As for the Social media restricting face to face social interaction, common sense should tell us that it is probably to enhance personal interaction. Groups of friends sharing common interests and passions, telling each other of events and social occasions that many would not otherwise hear of, leads to real world meetings, visits to clubs, concerts, and plays together. A few may use it as a substitute for a real social life but these probably never had one anyway. It is highly debatable as to whether an online social life is better than not having a real life one.”
What ever be the future of the tussle between a smiley vs a smile, virtual communication vs the real life interaction or online vs in person solitude, for now it seems that there’s no way one could go back to an era when these things didn’t exist.