Social media always gets bad reputation for how it can effect human relationship negatively. There are so many quotes, political cartoons, PSAs online saying “Look up! Go out to the world and socialize!”. Even myself wrote things like “social media is somehow associated with increase of loneliness and depression” and “the contact social media produces is not the same thing as intimacy” in my previous blog posts.
But, there are always two sides to a good question, so counter examples must be provided as well. We learned this in TOK, did we?
I truly believe social media has the ability to enhance communication, whether with friends or family. So when I came up with the topic of how social media can enhance interactions between people, I immediately thought of this illustration from Chuwen, a concept artist I followed online.
There are so many things I can talk about from the artistic side. For example, the illustration uses the complementary colors (see diagram below, it’s basically any opposite pair of colors on the color wheel:) blue and orange to create a sense of conflict. Through the strong contrast between the two vibrant colors, we get the feeling that the two people are exactly “opposite to each other” in all aspects: one side is at night while the other side has sun shinning through the window, the two sets of buildings behind the windows have different styles, etc… Yet the most dramatic part of this illustration is that the two people are back to back from each other, which to me seems like their life are parallel to each other, without any physical interactions; both of them are holding their phones and sending ♥ to each other through……social media (I assume:).
There are no words, but we can easily tell from the expressions of the two people that the artist is trying to illustrate that “unreachable” feeling created by the long distance relationship.
I know the two people probably looks more like a couple (haha it’s obvious= =) texting each other, but to me, it seems more like a mirror that reflects the current status of me and my family.
At this point of time, I’m approximately 8500 kilometers away from home. Sometimes I still get that “homesickness feeling” at night, especially when I’m stuffed with all the academic works and extra curricular activities. When that happens, I text my parents on social media, and it really helps to release some of my stress.
You might be wondering: why don’t I just call them? Is social media really necessary for maintaining contact from a long distance? Well, you have know there’s something called…
…time difference. I can’t just call them whenever I want!
Usually my parents are either sleeping or at work when I am able to call them, so to solve this issue, I “leave a message” in my family’s group chat, and they will probably see it hours later…
As you can see, if your home is far away, with oceans between you and your loved ones, it's even harder to always stay in touch. However, social media creates a platform for me to connect with my family, regardless of distance. With a software called WeChat, we can send FREE message whenever we want, we can update our daily life and interesting adventures, we can discuss about current issues timelessly without worrying about the price of those oversea calls (o_O !!!)…
The most recent example would be during that fearful lock down. As soon as we hided under the tables, I immediately texted my mother because I was kinda scared (TAT). I updated about what happened every few minutes, and those messages finally woke her up 3 am in the morning… (The thing is, my parents always turn the volume of their phones to the highest so that they won’t miss any of my calls) My mother send me a lot of encouraging words to help me cope with my fear and that intensive situation, which gave me a lot of strengths. Towards the end of the lock down when we all knew we were safe, my mother literally texted me “thanks to social media for letting us know about what happened to you…”. I am actually so thankful for the invention of social media too, for that it carried me the strengths from my mother 8500 kilometers away…
What's really making us unsocial? Is it the social media or the way we are using it?
Clearly in my family's example, social media can make offline relationships stronger, and it really plays a big role in maintaining long-distance relationship. We are able to stay in touch and be a part of each others' lives. Nothing’s more important than that.
PS: my dad actually knows about this blog… he even come up to look at my blog posts regularly to see how am I doing in English class…
… Miss you dad:)) ← this is the correct way of using social media XD
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