Like for a Like

Well, I was one of the many people or rather I still am, people who find fullness from social media attention. That notification that says him and her have liked the photo you have recently posted, that Instagram notification, that Facebook or Twitter notification. The excitement one gets when they have reached 100 plus likes. I used to ask my self and judge how other people are so addicted to social media attention until I realised I am just like them. You can be in a room filled with a hundred people and still feel like you are in your own personal space alone, why? Because the neck is bent down looking at a gadget. Everyone does that. I would like to believe that most of us seek social media attention because something lacks in our reality. There is something we all need or want but in our reality “that something” is not there. We run from our problems by spending countless hours looking at a gadget, well, more specifically being on social media counting the likes we got today and counting the followers we got and even setting a target to reach a certain amount of followers simply because this makes us feel better about ourselves and maybe because it makes us feels better about our lives, isn’t?

We live in societies where it's hard to have a proper conversation because one is looking at a gadget. People have made popularity in being “anti-social,” it's like a trend. Ye, of course,e there are people who are genuinely anti-social for the real but maybe it’s a minority, what about the rest of us? Are we really anti-social or are we stuck in a mental bubble world where we have built houses in an Instagram account? We prefer to be on Facebook or Twitter you can name them, it is really scary. In my mind, I have this scenario that one may address the issue of the next person always being on social media, being on his or her phone and just maybe the next person will understand that “I need your attention, let's talk face to face!” let’s say the person hears your cry and puts the gadget away and looks at you, you tell the person how you feel and you open up to them you tell them about that funny childhood story you have always been meaning to tell them, the both of you laugh and it feels really really good but then all of it crashes you realise how they fake laughed your story, you realise that at the back of their mind they have a craving to look at their phone probably to push the laugh they were thinking of some funny Twitter meme and you would never know, crazy right? This scenario is crazy but it could be true too.

Social media has impacted our lives in different ways, some people use social media to give out information or to motivate others, or just to simply do something good for somebody while some use social media to push certain agendas or they just seek to be cool and they just want to feed their esteem. Whatever it is, one has to be aware when it is getting out hand, that’s when you start to push people around you away by excessive use of social media. One would argue that a person who is constantly on social media becomes unaware that they are pushing people away which could be true until that one day you realise you're lonely and nobody is there. This is a sad reality, most of us entertain all these people who are far away from us people who don’t even know us and the people around us are left in the shadows. Now you realise that “I need someone to really confide in” and nobody is there for you. When you log in on social media you look for something to make you feel less alone, unconsciously you not aware that you are going back to the same thing that has made you lonely and too sad that you can’t find the right posts to feed yourself then you get frustrated. Long story cut short, so much for a like.