{"id":12203,"date":"2018-08-01T17:11:15","date_gmt":"2018-08-01T17:11:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordoftheprincess.dreamhosters.com\/?p=12203"},"modified":"2019-09-23T17:48:22","modified_gmt":"2019-09-23T17:48:22","slug":"social-media-has-made-us-obsessed-with-virtual-attention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordoftheprincess.dreamhosters.com\/?p=12203","title":{"rendered":"Social Media Has Made Us Obsessed With Virtual Attention"},"content":{"rendered":"

Almost everyone has at least one social media account. When I say almost everyone, it means there are still a few who don\u2019t have any<\/em> social media accounts.<\/p>\n

Having an account instills a sense of pride and if, for any reason, you don\u2019t have one, certain crowds consider you a \u201cweirdo\u201d. Personally, our social media obsession has been always a big puzzle to me now that I\u2019ve started to think about and observe this phenomenon more closely.<\/p>\n

I remember years ago when I was a young girl, my brother came up to me one evening and told me \u201cHey, check this out<\/em>\u201d and showed me the first social media platform in my country \u2014 even before the era of Facebook. Sure enough, I found it interesting, registered for an account, and started studying it. The idea was to find people you went to school or spent your childhood with, because life\u2019s challenges had somehow separated you and your friends, making them scattered all over the world. I found this very interesting as I had some friends from school that left the country.<\/p>\n

I remember spending a lot of time at the beginning exploring and being fascinated with this site. There were no Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Snapchat, so social media was very new. That site still exists but it\u2019s nowhere close to being as popular as Facebook today.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not what I want to talk about. I want to bring your attention to a different topic.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"Years later, Facebook was created. Then Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, and so on. People got so obsessed with the concept of social media. A lot of people spent more and more time on the Internet, befriending other people. Friend lists started to grow tremendously. People had thousands<\/em> of Facebook friends and were proud that they did. A numerous amount of people became obsessed with liking each others\u2019 pictures. People would put their pictures up right after they took a photo. They would post their location, achievements, daily doings, and so on. Some people did that to prove others wrong (like family members who thought that they\u2019d never make it, or even to show an ex they\u2019re happy without them). They did this to create jealousy, or out of hubris. Anyhow, the emotions by which people post these things aren\u2019t usually healthy.<\/p>\n

People With Healthy Emotions And Attitudes Are Less Likely To Have These Accounts And Post Like This, Because They Are Too Busy With Their Million Dollar Businesses, Or Their Wonderful Family And Children, As Opposed To Those Who Are On Facebook. You Get The Picture.<\/h2>\n

I started to ponder about this phenomena.<\/p>\n

We all want to have friends, be social, be accepted, and loved. However, we have grown to be such an narcissists that we care only about our own interests. The other day, I had coffee with an acquaintance who told me that she wants me to tell her my opinion\u00a0only<\/em>\u00a0when she asks for it, and that if she doesn\u2019t want to hear it, I should just suck it up and not say anything. Keep in mind that if someone you care about is falling down, or moving in the wrong direction, you\u2019d be the one to say: please stop, you are about to fall off a cliff. In my case, I was instead told: I want you to be my puppet, and I don\u2019t care what about your personality and how you treat me. I only care about what I want.<\/p>\n

Do you think this is a single example? No, it\u2019s one of thousands.<\/p>\n

Coming back to the topic of social media: people desperately want to have common friends, interests, and to communicate, but the only way they are ready to do it is through social media. Do you know why?<\/p>\n

Because We\u2019ve Forgotten How To Build Relationships.<\/h2>\n

Maybe forgotten is not the correct word. We\u2019ve become so lazy and concerned about ourselves that we just aren\u2019t interested in putting any kind of effort into building relationships with someone else. Building relationships means giving selflessly, it means sacrificing a lot of time and resources while getting nothing out of it in the meantime. Healthy relationships mean going into them with an open heart and being ready to get hurt as we become open and vulnerable beings. This is because real relationships are build on truthfulness and openness. One should be able to embrace that and work through anything that comes their way in order to make a relationship work. How many of us are ready for that? A few?<\/p>\n

Lots of people who grew up in broken families end up having notions of self-annihilation and self-hatred. Many of us don\u2019t even realize that we have it. But that is different story.<\/p>\n

So, back to social media. It turns out that we\u2019re all like that acquaintance of mine: we want what we want, at the time we want it, and in the way we want it. We\u2019re not ready to give anything to anyone, but we\u2019re eager to take.<\/p>\n

We Have Reached The Point Where We Get Nervous If No One Writes On Our Page, Likes Our Pictures, Or Comments On Our Posts.<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Every time you see a person happily smiling and staring at their cell phone, it\u2019s usually because someone said something on their social media. People are no longer comfortable being physically around other people. Have you seen how some people start playing with their phones in an elevator? What is it? Neurosis? Yes, of some sort.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve completely forgot that relationships are the most essential and important part of our lives. We can\u2019t live without them and there is no media or device that can substitute human contact. We\u2019re trying to trick ourselves, but why? Because our era unfortunately promotes an obsession with career, money, and materialistic things. There is no one to show us how lost we have become in our modern-day society. We have all the self-help books around, and many of us read everything there is, but still can\u2019t help ourselves and feel even more miserable than before we started to educate ourselves.<\/p>\n

We Have Social Media Where We Try To Create More And More Friends So We Can Proudly Proclaim: I Have\u00a0Many\u00a0Friends.<\/h2>\n

But forget Facebook. What kind of friends are they when there is no real contact, only a virtual one? Does it bring you any satisfaction? No. At the end of the day we still feel lonely and miserable and afraid. Only human connection, relationships with each other, and with God are able to build our confidence in tomorrow. But we all need to work on that. We need to be ready to fall, then get up and continue again. Do you think we are so selfish that we\u2019re ready to destroy ourselves rather than overcoming our fears and live in reality?<\/p>\n

Didn\u2019t we have enough of an illusionary life with only future or past, but without today? Without the wind playing with your hair at that moment, without a child playing in front of you and running to you to give you a sweet hug?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Almost everyone has at least one social media account. When I say almost everyone, it means there are still a few who don\u2019t have any social media accounts. Having an account instills a sense of pride and if, for any reason, you don\u2019t have one, certain crowds consider you a \u201cweirdo\u201d. Personally, our social media obsession […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12209,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,81,143],"tags":[145,147,146,144],"class_list":["post-12203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feminism","category-life","category-social-media","tag-facebook","tag-instagram","tag-snapchat","tag-social-media"],"yoast_head":"\nSocial Media Has Made Us Obsessed With Virtual Attention - Words of the Princess<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/wordoftheprincess.dreamhosters.com\/?p=12203\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Social Media Has Made Us Obsessed With Virtual Attention - Words of the Princess\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Almost everyone has at least one social media account. When I say almost everyone, it means there are still a few who don\u2019t have any social media accounts. Having an account instills a sense of pride and if, for any reason, you don\u2019t have one, certain crowds consider you a \u201cweirdo\u201d. 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