Dosthi in Danger?
HYDERABAD: While there are the older lot from the generation that vouch for lasting relationships, like-minded people and communities, here are the post-millennial kids who have thousands of friends on social media yet are engulfed with sadness, loneliness and depression. Studies from various academies including the University of Pittsburg and West Virginia find that social media use is linked to more feelings of social isolation. Are these numbers misleading in some way or do they speak about some unseen truth of the present generation?
Anuhya Rao, a bachelor of Business Administration, has innumerable followers but hardly finds time to socialise or make friends because most of her time is spent at work or making videos so whatever number we get to see on her Instagram handle are her followers, not really friends. She believes in the strength of friendship and so has a few friends in real life. “The post-millennials are not necessarily obsessed with themselves,” she says.
On the other hand, there are youngsters joining hands to work towards a better tomorrow. Many youngsters work for the underprivileged. There are spirited and enterprising social media groups comprising youngsters who decided to work in their weekends by feeding the poor and needy using their own hard-earned money. When asked about friends on social media, Ravi Teja Edupuganti, an artiste was quick to respond, “There might be thousands of friends online but no one can get true friendship online. It’s a virtual world where the best of every person is shown off to be normal. We are actually scared and we think about our reputation or so while we put up something on social media. The number of friends you have on social media doesn’t indicate the amount of support you have in life. Most of them are around you because they think you are better than them, be it physically, mentally or financially.”
He adds, “Psychologists say that this is a lonely generation. It is just because we misunderstand the difference between a friend and a person who’s just interested in you. Heartbreaks have become so common in this generation. People are ranting about things that they don’t have instead of being happy with what they have. One reason for this is social media. What is a luxury for one person might be a common thing for someone else. We are confused about the normality that has been taught in our home to the normality that we adopted through social media. This, in turn, is the reason for people to be lonely.” He stresses that “Another reason for loneliness is expectations. Expectations always lead to disappointments. Until and unless, these expectations are being understood as abnormal, people and actually not feel lonely.”
On the contrary Aditya Devulapally, a Mass Communication student of a reputed college says, “I see things in a different way. If you dive deep into the olden times you’d find that people had their own obsessions, books, wars etc. We don’t need to blame social media for everything.”
There are three types of problems: easy, difficult and impossible. It’s just that people in those days had problems which could be solved which can be called difficult problems. However, our generation only has easy or impossible ones. Kids these days solve their WiFi issue in no time but finds it a huge leap to solve issues of war and peace. I think this inability to solve things made us laid-back and we feel it’s easy to switch to compulsive tweeting and posting. This is what makes us lonely and depressed. No matter what, I feel friendship is not about the presence but the connection between people.” Nevertheless what is heartening is that everyone is seeking joy from everything around and as long as it doesn’t harm anyone. As the world moves forward, hope technology only strengthens human bonds –virtual or otherwise.