Bhumika Koirala

Published On: March 4, 2019 02:39 PM NPT By: Bhumika Koirala

Social or anti-social?

Social or anti-social?

The shattering clouds, heavy rainfall and a stormy weather. It was a month of August.  It was almost raining daily. People have mixed reactions to rain. But for me, it brings a certain peace within. It is perfect to lie down in your cozy bed listening to the sound of the rainfall. I was sitting on the sofa with my headphones on and scrolling through the social media. Suddenly, someone removed the headphones off of my head. Angrily, I turned back to see who it was as my favorite part of the song had just begun. There was my mom standing with a more angry-looking face.

I began to think about every possible thing that I might have done wrong but couldn’t think of any. Softly, I asked “What’s wrong, Mom?” Then she bursted, “I’ve been calling you a hundred times and here I see you always busy with your phone and putting your stupid headphones on. It’s been raining. Don’t you remember you need to pick up your clothes? You know I have a severe back pain. It’s so hard for me to even stand up. It seems like you have created a different world and you are never out of that.”

“Oh Shit!” I said to myself. I had totally forgotten that I had left my clothes to dry. “Sorry, mom. It totally went off my mind”, I told her. Yet I knew, a sorry was not going to fix this. This generation or the upcoming generation, I would call a ‘virtual   generation’. Almost everything that we do in our life is directly or indirectly controlled by a device. The ease of use and the simplicity that a smartphone has brought to our life is incredible. Yet it seems like the humankind is slowly starting to get lost within a virtual environment.

Consider how human interactions used to be. Certain gestures, facial expressions were a major part of a communication back then. But now, communication is more like texting. We are confident because we are sitting behind a computer .We don’t need the courage to look into someone’s eyes and get nervous and so on. We can say or write whatever we want to.

I sometimes wonder what is to happen if we were to lose our phones. Almost everything seems to be embedded inside a device. From our banking transactions to ordering our food, from all our personal moments captured in photos and videos to our professional documents. Sounds like our whole life stored in a storage device. It’s quite obvious why we are obsessed with our phones. But our parents or grandparents have lived through a time where there were no such technologies. So we can’t expect them to understand.

I tried to recall the last time we spent a family time. Apparently, a long time ago. Even if we have our dinner together, a phone is always there by our side, beeping continuously with notifications. We are very eager to know who liked our post or how many comments we got. It’s not possible to neglect our phones completely, because everything is inside it. But at least we can separate a little time for the people we care and spend some quality time them. It’s what brings us together. I suddenly realized that I had been lost in my thoughts for so long and mom was angry with me. So I decided to prepare some dinner and spend some quality time with my family.

social, anti_social,

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