Is social media ruining our relationship? I am sure many would say ‘yes’ to this. While social media is a boon for those in a long –distance relationship, it isn’t getting brownie points from the rest.
Ironically social media started as a conduit to connect with people. It has been extremely beneficial to many including me. I use social media primarily for business and to promote my writing and books. I have found clients through this medium, long-lost friends, relatives who live abroad, like-minded friends and co-authors and fans.
Social media is like a double-edged sword. If you are in it for business, there are millions of ways it can help you but if you are into for socializing then some amount of maturity is called for.
Tina and Dinesh have been in relationship for almost six months and then she re-posted an old pic of her ex in her Facebook and Instagram and after three months Dinesh broke up with her. Tina tried to patch up with saying that she didn’t repost it deliberately but by then there were 50 odd comments on the post speculating about her new relationship and old.
Ten years ago, if two people were in love their close friends and maybe their parents would know but today it is examined by all and sundry in your friend’s list. If we analyse our friends list you will find few people whom we know by sight and a crowd of others who we haven’t met. Popular social butterflies almost obsessively update their schedules, what they ate for breakfast, lunch, dinner and the snacks in between and their latest relationship. They record their feelings for each other, use Facebook and twitter to declare their love, myriad other feelings. It’s all hunky dory until things go well but social media remembers a lot of things and that’s where the problem begins.
One fine day, it will bring up link saying, ‘Click here to re-post pictures that were posted last year, this day’ and you will find yourself staring at a host of pictures from last year. Of course there is nothing wrong with it but for those who have a history of relationship will find themselves looking at photos of their ‘ex’ unless they were smart enough to delete them before hand.
Now let us examine Tina and Dinesh’s life sans social media. They hook up at an office party and are an item for a few months. They have both had past relationships that didn’t work out but they are in a good place right now. Both are committed to their new relationship and are open about their past. If they had stayed off social media they could have actually set a date to get engaged to be married. But fate intervenes or rather Facebook intervenes and she posts a ‘this day that year photo’ prompted by the system and a relationship that could have blossomed in the right direction, goes down the drain.
Her friends comment about the picture of the ex, saying that they made a cute couple that didn’t go well with Dinesh. And soon Dinesh obsessively wants to see all her previous posts and sends a nasty message to her ‘ex’. This prompts an all out war between the couple and sows the seeds for their break up.
This anonymous tweet sums up everything that is wrong with the present generation –
Relationships are harder now because conversations become texting, arguments become phone calls, and feelings become status updates…
