Connected to the World, Distant from Life

Connected to the World, Distant from Life

Social media has allowed us to reach out to all corners of the world, but does it affect how we talk to the people in our personal lives? Research points to possible links between sites like “Facebook” and an inability to relate to others offline. Every day there is a new study out that proves the problems that social media causes such as a communication issues in personal relationships as well as difficulty focusing on our jobs due to addiction. With social media becoming more and more a part of our everyday life, some say there are connections to be made with negative impacts to the modern relationship.

        Instead of spending time interacting with friends and loved ones, people are preferring to stay online. Facebook has become such a large part of people’s lives that we have begun to justify reasons for checking in on the site because they believe they can find gratification when visiting these sites and that it can make them feel better. (Giannakos 2013). If we were to go into a restaurant twenty years ago, we would have seen people conversing and becoming closer in their relationships with one another. If we were to go to a restaurant today, we would most likely see couples and families sitting at the same table yet not speaking. Their eyes would be glued to their phones instead of focusing on the person right in front of them. According to research, “over 700 billion minutes per month” (Giannakos 2013) were spent on social media sites in 2011. This may seem shocking at first but not when you consider that most people find it difficult to go even a half hour without checking their social media feeds.

Due to this inability to restrain the urge to “check” their Facebook, many people have been diagnosed with addiction to sites like Facebook and suffer for it in various ways. In today’s world, people lose their jobs because they cannot function without constantly pulling out their phone to satisfy their craving of “connection.” (Turel 2015). Rather than focus on the work at hand, these addicts prefer to scroll through their multiple news feeds and this creates conflict with meeting deadlines for work. One person receiving an evaluation was terminated for “repeatedly [leaving] her shift [to checking and update] her Facebook page” (Turel 2015) and this is a growing problem in today’s work force.  In some cases, people lose their jobs on the first day because they cannot filter their posts to Facebook to exclude work related topics. This dependence on Facebook and other sites like it can be categorized as an addiction to social support and can even supply sexual fulfillment for some. (Turel 2015) We as a society are incapable of drawing the line on what is a healthy amount of screen time and therefore, are paying the consequences in multiple areas of our lives.

        While social media makes it easy for people to meet and form relationships, it is detrimental to those relationships. Facebook has been linked to certain marital troubles that people face that include a lack of communication, cheating, and eventually divorce. Today’s most elite divorce attorneys believe that almost 81% of divorce cases are directly related to Facebook. (Clayton 2013). Most people do not even realize that they are destroying their relationships by choosing to be on Facebook instead of being with their partners. Some possess a growing jealousy of their significant other’s screen time and this causes them to obsessively using Facebook to stalk them to uncover possible acts of infidelity. Facebook has become a feeding ground for “feelings of exclusion and concealment in addition to lower commitment” (Clayton 2013). When relationships become nothing but jealousy and distrust, there comes nothing but unhappiness until the core of the issues are addressed.