Essay: How Social Media Are Destroying Our Connections By Creating Virtual Validation

In today’s hyper-connected world, digital communication has become the vital conduit we network with those we care about.

source: framer.website

What transformed from straightforward networking sites for keeping relationships alive has converted into something remarkably more nuanced.

The Curated Life Syndrome

Potentially the most toxic feature of social media is the method it encourages ongoing assessment.

Every glance through our accounts saturates us with deliberately chosen highlight reels of other narratives.

We discover marvelous expeditions, perfect matches, notable triumphs, and ideal households.

At the same time, our raw experiences feel inadequate by comparison.

This ceaseless presentation to others’ highlight reels produces impractical benchmarks for our personal experiences.

The Behavioral Modification System

Technology giants have been carefully designed to commandeer our mindful presence.

Every feature has been methodically refined to sustain our interest.

Chronic consumption, chronic notifications, and personalized algorithms combine forces to manufacture habitual usage.

This continuous dopamine hits adjusts our mental framework to long for swift acknowledgment.

If we aren’t getting persistent virtual engagement, we combat restless, underwhelmed, or alone.

The Relationship Poison

Particularly disturbing is how electronic communication impedes genuine understanding.

Authentic interpersonal bonds requires full attention, sincerity, and focused periods together.

Electronic interfaces establishes complications to every essential aspect.

Throughout our interactions, habitual intrusions control our attention away from our significant other truly accessible.

As opposed to concentrating on real communication, we discover we’re habitually refreshing through electronic data.

As an alternative to our meaningful observations and impressions, we become involved with showcasing our events for digital publicity.

The Digital Approval Syndrome

Social media has altered the way we seek approval and personal importance.

Previously we earned our self-worth from substantial gains, inner growth, and sincere partnerships, we today see ourselves habitually craving electronic endorsement.

Approval indicators, reactions, circulations, and relationships transform into our significant criteria for reviewing our self-regard.

This empty acknowledgment deteriorates into relentless because it’s fluctuating, ephemeral, and intrinsically shallow.

Apart from actual victories or significant connections, virtual recognition presents only immediate gratification.

The Filter Bubble Problem

Technological choice makers have been manufactured to supply us with messages that echoes our established views.

This constructs filter bubbles where we’re relentlessly supplied to perspectives that corroborates what we presently adopt.

Alongside this, alternative stances are screened out, designing an increasingly polarized social structure.

This segregation extends to our family ties, building abnormal levels of conflict between friends, immediate family, and intimate companions.

The Exhibition Culture

Electronic networks has amplified our core motivation to grade ourselves to individuals in our network.

What traditionally was limited within grading ourselves to close associates has amplified to comprise endless unknown persons throughout the planet.

STATS ABOUT DIVORCES/RELATIONSHIPS

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/marriage-divorce.htm

https://www.familyrelationships.gov.au/separation

https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1441&context=studentpub

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divorce

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_divorce