The question on the tip of everyone’s social-media-obsessed lips is this: how bold can people be on the Internet?
Anonymity and the lack of face-to-face contact makes people more willing to say what is on their mind sans embarrassment or consideration of consequences, however, there is another side to the social media world. This shy twin, so to speak, comes out in even the boldest of social media users when it comes to a simple act we participate in everyday: social interaction.
A video I saw on Facebook made me think about how communicating over social media has actually led us to be more reserved than we were before. The about four minute video shows a message conversation between a man and woman who obviously have chemistry. Through dual screens, you can watch both write and erase their words of honesty and replace them with a more conservative, neutral tone. A conversation that could have ended in a date, closed with a simple “See you later.”
Everyone has seen that movie moment. The young girl and the young guy, both shy, stumbling over their words and through the blushing and the stuttering and the awkward body language, both the audience and the characters know there is chemistry.
However, we now live in a constant scene from “You’ve Got Mail.” We’re all Tom Hanks’ character, sitting at our computers (though probably not through AOL), backspacing until we have broken our keyboards.
What this video really made me consider the most, however, is how we have reached a point where we are so tuned in to social and digital media that we’re actually tuned out.
Take the couple in the video, for example. They both are so concerned about what they are typing that they aren’t even taking the time to think about their own, or the other person’s, emotions.
People can’t simply enjoy much of anything anymore without a phone in hand. I went to a Bruno Mars concert in August and, like at many of his concerts, he asked his audience to put their phones down and enjoy the show. Even still, throughout the entire show the two girls sitting next to me texted during every song.
A video titled “I Forgot My Phone,” starring 29-year-old comedian Charlene deGuzman, went viral on YouTube. In the video, DeGuzman acts out an average day from the moment she wakes up with her significant other to the moment she goes to bed with him, all without her phone making a cameo. It’s interesting to watch how going bowling, having lunch with friends, and even cuddling can be ruined by social media and phones.
At one point even, during a birthday party, everyone is recording the singing of “Happy Birthday” and deGuzman holds the cake. And although everyone is singing, it seems as if the only person really paying attention is deGuzman. With their heads in their phones, you couldn’t even tell who the birthday girl, or boy, was.
Via: vimeo.com
In fact, by the end of the video, you feel as if deGuzman had a much better day than her tuned-in friends.
The numbers say it all. According to Fast Company, 25 percent of smartphone users ages 18 to 44 cannot remember when their phone wasn’t in reach or at least within the same room. An even greater 79 percent says they keep their phone with them all but two hours of their day.
This explains why 189 million of Facebook’s users are “mobile only,” meaning instead of posting when they get back to their apartment, your bowling trip, dinner date or mall outing has been ruined by somebody hopping on the site.
Social media has made it easier to live life through the delete key and planned words. Amongst the funny posts on Facebook and the reckless tweets, we as the children of the computer age have lost a sense of spontaneity. Just because it’s in the digital realm doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be the same as a face-to-face moment. Even more than that, we have to remember that when we do have the face-to-face moments we should put down our phones and actually enjoy the people around us.
