In one of my relatives, a person is much addicted to the social networking and connectivity sites and applications. He spends almost two to three hours on Facebook; checking the status of his friends and updating his own. Rapidly growing popular message and call applications like webchat, wechat and others are all present on his smart phone and he is found busy in using them. Usually, he likes to chat via voice messages with his friends living in other cities or countries. After every minute or two, he sends or receives a voice message. In such circumstances, he fails to become a part of the gathering of family members who talk and give company to each other. But sometimes, this excessive usage of social connectivity applications enters a ridiculous situation. The other day, some of his best friends had come from another city. After a nice dinner, tea was served and a pleasant discussion was in progress. As usual, some of his friends started sending their voice messages. Our friend also got busy in this communication of messages and forgot the presence of his friends. His friends also felt that they were being ignored and the man was giving more company to the friends on the other side of the phone rather than those friends who were sitting with him in the same room. It is the reason why, his brother often comments about him like this, ‘When his best friends would come to see and talk to him, he would remain busy in talking to those who are away from him. I have not understood this complex with him.’
Both in East and West, the negative impacts of social websites are frightening a lot many people; parents, friends and other members of family. No doubt, the social networking sites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and others have played their vital role in boosting public freedoms in different parts of the world but their negative impacts are also not ignorable. A recent report by an international new channel had similar findings. In the United States, the number of people remaining busy with their smart phones and tablet PCs are sharply increasing and they can be seen everywhere busy with either of them. People fear that phones and computers are snatching away the time and company needed by the people around them and it is becoming a social obstacle.
But the worst victim of these sites have become the children who started spending more time with computer and smart phones instead of people around them. The condition has really depressed the parents as they are not able to control their kids in this regard. Children usually become addicted to these things in their teens or early teens when parents cannot pressurize them as what to do and what to not. In such circumstances, parents find themselves completely helpless and their children in the grip of electronic gadgets. It is the reason why, present day kids are becoming weak in their social interaction skills. Apart from these, they are also facing the negative physical and emotional impacts of increased computer-related activities.
The problem is very serious in the developed countries where busy parents don’t have much time to sit with their kids but this social epidemic is also spreading in the less developed or developing countries of the world. Even in our country Afghanistan, the problem is slowly taking its roots. I have seen some groups of friends sitting together but all of them are busy with their mobile phones. Contrary to the developed countries of the world, this thing is much felt in our society because ours is a society based on old thoughts and ideals. Here, social interactions are given more importance and people often rear sentimental attachments about them. Another factor is of religion. Many of the contents found on these websites might be contradictory to our religious set of beliefs and thus may face criticism from the parents and elders of the family.
When the same question was asked from a scholar, he gave a very promising answer which I would like to quote here, ‘This is in fact not a problem, but indication of a problem. In times when we were aware and conscious of our responsibilities as parents and when we were not running madly after materialistic acquisitions, we were able to spare time to our children and they never felt any need to be attracted to other things but today, we became so busy that we don’t have time to our children and even ourselves. Instead of thinking methods to handle your children in their different moods and different conditions, it is more convenient to make them sit in front of a television and get rid of them for some hours. Same phenomenon works when some parents send their children to school because they think that for at least half day, they would be free of the trouble of their children. There is a law of physics that vacuum can never exist and whenever vacuum is produced somewhere, it is soon occupied by the air or gases near it. In the same way, when we left the vacuum in our lives and that of our children by not giving them proper attention, this vacuum was filled by activities like computer, games and the internet.’
‘When we will invent positive activities to our children and tactically draw them towards these, there would definitely be no room for any external activity to enter their lives. But it is easy when talking but much difficult in practice because it needs love, patience, tolerance and being innovative to develop new ideas and bring them smoothly in the lives of our children. For this, parents need to know about time management and the psychology of children. For this, they need to show willingness to go through the hardships and make the strategy work. For this, parents need to have a good control on the routine of their children but it must be asked first, are they in the control of themselves? Have they disciplined their own lives? Have they overcome the behavioral problems found in their personalities? When the answers of these questions will be positive, we would be able to take our next step but if not, we must start work with our own personalities and then with that of our children. If this problem is not solved rationally, it is really meaningless to keep complaining about the harmful effects of internet, computer and social networking websites because tomorrow, the gap in our lives will be filled by another thing and this may be even more harmful than the internet or computer.’
The words of the scholar made me see the clear picture and this is what I have also tried to bring for our readers.