How Being Plugged In Can Plague Your Relationships
Today, it is impossible to imagine life without being connected. Regardless of what people do – working, resting or traveling – there is the Internet as a constant companion. Internet is an ever-present god. It is in the workplace, in the streets, at home, and even in vacation destinations. But how has the perpetual culture of getting online affect our social lives?
While the Internet transcends space and time for those who are miles apart, it also widens the originally inexistent gap between people who are in fact physically together.
How absurd is it for officemates to chat with one another when the only thing that stands between them is a cubicle wall? But chatting and emailing in the same office is normal. Why bother standing up and walking to a desk ten meters away when it only takes a few clicks to send a message?
And there are mass mails or group chats, too, which makes for a quite conversation in the workplace. Thanks to meetings, group lunches and team buildings, officemates may finally meet that person two desks away and start a real friendship.
As with intimate relationships among friends, families and couples – the effects of non-personal communication are more troubling. How many date nights have been ruined all because someone’s phone is constantly nagging its owner for business calls, or worse, social media alerts?
How many kids have become too reclusive from their parents, finding contentment facing their tablets, smart phones or computers the entire day? Social media has stirred individuals into engaging virtual relationships, missing the important part of knowing others through actual conversation and physical meeting. Yes, virtual reputation is often too different from the actual. There are plenty of fake people online.
Being perpetually plugged in is not bad if it means connecting with those who are so far away, finishing a work assignment, obtaining important information, or building online brand. But being online is not a very good substitute for communicating with people who can be physically around for some intimate conversation.
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