Disconnected? by ahaana

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Do you see the world through a palm-sized screen, filtered with a rose tint, double clicking with your thumb to like and publicise your opinion? I know I do. 

I've recently began to look around me and have noticed so many marriages and relationships breaking up, and often wonder why it is becoming the norm for relationships to constantly end.

After much thought and ponder, I’ve unfortunately realised that the one to blame is our friend with many avatars; the social media. I think this is perhaps because we don’t really need ‘one’ person anymore. We have over a thousand people at our fingertips every second of every day. People that are subconsciously controlling and judging us all the time. Today, when our relationships hit the rocks, we can just log into a social media site and get high off this false sense of appreciation. We don’t have time to actually sit down and understand what went wrong and why the relationship is hitting rock bottom, because rather than fixing it, we find it easier to tweet about it.

Let’s be honest, as harsh as this may sound, a large portion of our self worth is now based on ‘likes’, ‘comments’ and inbox messages with colourful words but no depth.  We spend all our time trying to appease people distant from us; meanwhile the person who loves you for who you are without a ‘filter’ becomes an option, while the rest of the world’s meaningless opinion becomes your priority. 

We’re scarily losing sight of ourselves. So caught up in this world we believe is real, so oblivious to how it’s taking away from who we actually are. We need to step back and realise that the real world isn’t what we see on our iPhone screens. Why is it so hard to have a real conversation without looking at our phones? Are we addicted to social media or just addicted to ourselves? 

Without realising, we have commercialised ourselves. We have created versions of ourselves that we’re constantly trying to sell. Social media is all about self-promotion but this isn’t a good situation; we can never really measure the success of the promotion. We convince ourselves that our online personalities are just a pure representation of us, but this isn’t true, is it? Isn’t it just a version of ourselves that we would like to be?

I know this might sound a bit silly but it is almost like having a split personality. We’re all living dual lives, and unfortunately most of us prefer the virtual world because in it we have the ability to shape and mould our personalities into a sellable product.  We’re so caught up in this ‘business’ that we’re slowly becoming disconnected from reality. We now get more pleasure from chatting online rather than actually going out and having a genuine laugh with your friends as opposed to typing ‘LOL’ and not really laughing.

We have forgotten that as human beings we thrive on social interaction; it is the way we were made to function. Who you are today is because of the way you were socialised, what your parents and teachers taught you, not how you spent hours staring at a fake version of reality on an iPad.

I too am guilty of blurring the line between the real world and the virtual world. I spend well over half my day staring at my phone or computer screen. I take more pleasure in taking a picture of a rainbow, adding a filter, and then uploading it on Instagram followed by Facebook, rather than soaking it in and truly enjoying the moment.

This must stop because before we know it ‘real’ communication will cease to exist. We will soon forget what a genuine conversation feels like and before we know it end up becoming antisocial beings. 

So as we welcome the new year, trim the amount of time you allow your children to fiddle around on an iPad, instead go out and play with them. Refrain from trying to capture the moment rather than actually savouring it. Forget about trying to make your friend taste your food from a million miles away through a Snapchat post, revel in the taste and enjoy it for yourself. And when you finish reading this, shut down that display. Close your eyes. And ask yourself. Who am I?

Ahaana is a fashion journalism student at London College of Fashion. You can find her over on her blog! Find more posts by Ahaana here...