Do online social networks indeed connect people?
Posted on May 9, 2008 | Categorized under Internet
With easier than ever ways to connect people, Online Social Networks (OSNs) are growing with a skyrocketing speed! Prior to their arrival, the set of people with whom we could share an interest or collaborate over an activity was pretty much limited to our neighborhood. OSNs have removed that proximity barrier all together. It takes only moments to search and befriend with a similar mind or an activity partner that could, in reality, be located across the globe! But does it all really come without any price-tag on it? Well, not really. It indeed has a black side that can work exactly against its very purpose of connecting people!
In a broad sense, we can divide OSNs into two categories — specific OSNs and generic OSNs. Specific OSNs, as the name suggest, focus on a specific interest or activity. For example, consider Debate.com — it’s a platform that focuses on facilitating debates among people; and that’s it! Another kinds of OSNs i.e. generic OSNs don’t focus on anything specific as such. Those are, by far, more popular social networking platforms today e.g. MySpace.com, Facebook.com, Orkut.com etc. And these are the ones who carry a concerning downside with them that we’re precisely going to talk about here.
By design, generic OSNs don’t focus on a specific interest or activity; that’s actually one of the reasons behind their larger user base too — it’s for everyone! Now this lack of focus has a side effect — it develops a tendency of aimless browsing in users. Various features provided by these OSNs actually encourage this type of browsing. For example, each user has a profile page where he can share anything and everything — his likes/dislikes, daily diaries, personal relationships, beliefs, photos, videos and well, everything and anything! And why would one share all this stuff? It’s because that makes the profile page more cool and complete! Studies on OSNs have shown that people keep sharing even highly personal stuff on their profile pages to attract more visitors; and, in turn, they too end up spending hours browsing through other’s profile pages, updates, photos, and videos — even whom they don’t know and not going to meet in their lives. As a matter of fact, this kind of web browsing, over a period, often tuns into an addiction and further has been considered as a psychiatric disorder!
The story doesn’t end here itself! To make the matter worse, there is an alarming relationship observed between hours spent in OSNs and degree of social isolation experienced by people. Following chart from a Stanford study article clearly depicts the fact -
These OSNs are taking people away from their real world as they get more and more absorbed into these virtual worlds. This kind of social isolation can moreover lead to a depression that comes with social loneliness. And as per Durkheim’s theory of egoistic suicide, less integration with society and community around us often leads to suicide!
In short, like every other great tool, OSNs are beneficial to a discerner only. Now, may be because no one in neighborhood extends a first hand of friendship, or may be because it’s easier to “poke someone” or to “add as a friend” in online worlds; people easily tempt to engross in these virtual worlds — and further to build world’s largest friend list there to get a temporary feel of importance. But as real human beings, by nature, we do need company of real people to survive. A software can’t stimulate that peace of mind or a feel of refreshment which comes with spending quality time with your real friends in real world, can it really? And so, it’s better to understand and appreciate that line of separation between real and virtual; and further to maintain both of them at their own places.
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