Once upon a time, relationships were established through face-to-face contact. Now, in our era of high speed everything, we are left to our own devices to kick start “meaningful” relationships. Devices referring to electronics, and meaningful meaning however long you can hold a Facebook message war.
We go out, we meet people, we exchange numbers and that is about the limit of social interaction.
Through electronic means, more and more relationships are being defined rather than the seemingly “old fashioned” techniques of times past. Old friends are kept in touch with thorough networking sites, emails, text messages and even the ubiquitous phone call is considered taboo when a quick, non-descript text can suffice. If you want to avoid someone, you can ignore his attempts to contact you. On the Internet, everything is visible. Google someone from high school, see what they’re up to. Start an email relationship with a person half way across the world. Exchange photos with people you’ve never met. We are connected in so many ways through technological means that it seems we never even have to leave our house to see all our friend’s happenings.
However, one cannot doubt the ever-present sense of loneliness that is more prevalent in our society now than ever. You can spend days without human contact. People are no longer seeing the need for meetings, phone calls or even dating. We are left on hyper-speed mode to seek out people, and then use every electronic mean to get to know them.
The problem with our modernized way of communication is that we are lacking in personality. We are awkward, unnerved by the interactions that we are forced to have when we are around others and the anxiety levels have skyrocketed.
Why are we finding it so much easier to rely on the faceless deity of the media?
It is because we are losing ourselves. We are losing the spontaneity, the romance, the simple surprises that gave people reasons to be around their own kind. It is so much easier to take time to plan out every word, calculate how long you should wait to not seem too eager to reply and use keys on the keyboard to express tone and emotions throughout a message.
Going with the saying that art parallels real life, we can heavily see the effects of our society’s hermit state in films. Even character’s now when in comparison to those of cinema’s past have considerably less development and reliance on their personal interactions. Everything is about self gain and the struggle for importance.
If this is all true, where are we going? There are days even on campus that I go without speaking to a soul. What happened to good ol’ common kindness? If we carry on at the rate we’re going, the novelty of things such as a “text message break up” will become the norm, and perhaps digitalized marriages and divorces will be the next big thing. Guess we’ll all just have to check our emails for it.
