السلام عليكم
Referring to the above-mentioned opinion, I certainly agree with what the writer has propounded pertaining to the indiscriminate use of social-networking sites as a medium to elicit responses- especially praises. I must say that the media (Facebook) here tends to cloud our judgements and perceptions towards an individual's identity or personality. For instance, when one post good things on his Facebook statuses or photos in order to portray himself in a positive light, then the people who must have viewed his Facebook account would have this fake impression that he is a nice being. This is indeed shaping our mind to be rather shallow and narrow-minded. We might get influenced by these fake facades and get deceived which would result in detrimental consequences. To make my point clearer for instance, one can post many stunning photos of himself on Facebook in order to attract a specific targetted group of audience (pretty girls maybe?). With the customized privacy settings, he could simply choose to privatise any hideous or immoral pictures on his account so as to prevent anyone from seeing those pictures. When another individual sees his nice pictures, he/she may choose to 'add' him on facebook simply because of his good-looking photos even though that particular individual might not even know the person in real life. Isn't this saddening? I mean friendships are supposed to be forged with love, trust, care and concern but I guess Facebook has eroded the true meaning and value of friendships now. One can have up to 2000 friends on his Facebook account but in reality, his close friends may only be 10?
Speaking of which, some people might tend to blindly 'add' people on Facebook without even knowing them so as to accumulate the 'number of friends' he have on Facebook. He just wants to 'collect' his friends so that he may appear to be very popular on the social-networking site. Clearly, friends are now being seen as objects that can be easily accumulated to gain reputation and popularity. If this is happening now, then what about the future generations? Will they be able to identify and know the true value of friendship? Or will they just associate friends as objects? If that is the case, then I think that people will become colder, emptier and sad.
Our globalising world has indeed diminished vital values such as care, concern and trust. Maybe people will become heartless in the future. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
