So many LIKES

Here are a few observations about behaviour as seen on social media and possible implications that it has had on people's lives.

So many likes

Appreciation has now become convenient - just the click of an icon. Appreciation has become common - for random status updates, pictures, videos and articles shared, etc. Acknowledgement and appreciation used to be more cumbersome in the past. It required some amount of effort to actually show it or say it. It was also something that was reserved for bigger occasions and events in one's life. Today, we tend to appreciate through likes, comments, shares, retweets, etc. multiple times each day.

As a consequence, the need to be appreciated has also increased. So has the need to be seen by others while being appreciated.

It could be said that as people get more busy with their lives and have fewer actual interactions with their social circles, they feel a gap being created in their lives. While this is never completely filled in by appreciation and interaction on social media, it has started assuming a bigger role in people's life with the acceptance of this form of living. Hence, the dependence on being appreciated publicly on social media is becoming more real and increasingly crucial to people.

De-sensitizing

At any point in time in our lives earlier, we would be exposed to a smaller set of events that used to occur in our environment. We were exposed to stories in the lives of friends whenever we would meet them or speak to them in person - and this was usually be a small group of people. We were exposed to news through word of mouth, television and newspapers whenever we would expose ourselves to it.

A hypothesis here is that with lesser events happening in and around our lives and us being exposed to them in intervals of time which were longer, we would be able to dedicate a greater share of our emotions to them.

Today, with social media where we have are connected with much larger circle of people and get updated on events from their lives and from the world constantly, it has led to us allocating a much lower share of our emotional self with these happenings. This has reduced our sensitivity towards everything that is happening around us because there is just too much happening. For us to devote a part of our emotions to an event or occurrence, it needs to be really important. If it is not that important, we just feel that we have conveniently done our bit by sharing, liking or commenting on it. We are now much less sensitive to occurrences in our environment than what we used to be.

I support the cause

The obvious argument the moment I mention that we are de-sensitized to events around us is the whole social media leading to revolutions and awakening in thousands of people. This phenomenon is true and cannot be argued. We do align ourselves with causes which seem of extreme importance in our environment. In some cases, we do go beyond virtual support and take up the challenge on ground.

However, with hundreds of causes that occur in our environment each day, our alignment with them overall has decreased. I repeat that unless we find something extremely critical, we do not emotionally align ourselves with the cause. In most cases, it is just a convenient casual alignment by showing support online and forgetting about the cause completely or moving on till the next one.

We need much in terms of criticality from an event for it to move our hearts.

See - I have a life

Some people are doing a lot of things in their everyday lives while some, a few. Examples include travelling to places, spending time with people close to them, shopping, eating out, dressing up, celebrating important moments, reading, writing, taking up a hobby, etc. This varies from person to person and has always been so. However, when it comes to social media, we are constantly exposed to a feed from a very large group which keeps exposing us to all the different things that people are upto. The belief about the inputs that go in to constitute a 'good life' have increased significantly. No matter how much we wish to ignore, it can lead to developing two conditions:

1. That we are not doing enough in our own lives - as we tend to compare our life with the sum total of all the people in our social circle

2. That we would not remain an acceptable part of this social group if we do not show that we also have a life which is happening

In some extreme cases, it can even lead to a situation where showing that we have an eventful and interesting life/ opinion assumes greater importance than living and enjoying the moment. However on a more common level, we do tend to feel some pressure to show that we have an interesting life.

Taking a break

The pattern in which social media is commonly accessed is like taking a break from regular work. At regular intervals, they would switch to the various windows open on their browsers or pick up their phones and go through get their minds occupied with the updates. Again, there are two implications of this that I can think of:

1. It provides them with a feed that is different from what they are doing - hence it helps diverting their minds from their regular work

2. With people being more busy and the definition of means of entertainment changing, they expect social media to fill in for this need

This entertainment-diversion of the mind, could have resulted in the pattern of content which is entertaining, visual, aesthetic, appealing, etc. grabbing attention and becoming popular. Social media is an avenue which provides us with a regular dose of entertaining diversion of the mind.

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Obviously this is not an exhaustive encapsulation even for me. But any further observations and implications are most welcome. Can keep updating this post as more thoughts are discussed.

Also, these observations would not be true in all cases. Just saying J