Is our social life overlapping the private?

A little girl stood next to the swing in the playground as her friend sat on it. "You're not my friend anymore," I heard the girl telling the other on the swing.

I looked up to them and saw the first girl pouting and almost at the verge of shedding tears.

"What happened dear," I asked, and found that her friend, who was still on the swing, had not called her friend or waited for her to come to the playground together.

The girl on the swing seemed to be horrified with the idea of losing a friend. Thus the sweet words began to follow and within a few minutes, I saw them holding each other's hands and running around the playground with a group of children.

Maybe this is what epitomises innocence, I thought fondly. "I'm not your friend anymore" – is not a simple statement to children and it is something very severe to deal with. The urge to be included and the fear of being left dominate the human psyche, I always felt. It starts early when we are just beginners in learning social skills and then stays for a long time. As grown-ups, we tend to follow a trend; to remain in a group. Our social life becomes important to most of us, to some extent. I am sure my sociologist and psychologist friends would be able to explain it better and correct the wrongs.

But the paradigm of our social life has made a major shift these days. It has entered a new dimension with the emergence of social media.

Glimpses of a get-together of friends, academic achievement or musical soiree with fellow patrons adore my screen whenever I look at it. No doubt all of those soothe my eyes and provide a good feeling for the people around me. It exudes positive energy.

Sharing doubled their joys, many people told me. An unexpected accolade or a long-awaited acknowledgement or a most-coveted success became unique when they shared it on social media and were showered with appreciation from the others.

As every coin has another side, some people always struggle to be a part of the trend, I can see. They are never at ease in sharing their moments of bliss, their hopes or fears. "Why should I let everyone else know if I'm going for a quiet walk in the evening? That moment is mine," one of my friends told me once.

Another friend felt that there was no need to post a photo of the breakfast her husband cooked for her, though her friends always do that. "According to my husband, any personal post on social media becomes a PDA- public display of affection," she said. "It may have a negative impact on my relationship," she said.

I found myself in the same boat as her. I struggled to determine whether we should or should not share our private issues and moments publicly on social media and asked my bestie, an acclaimed poet and academician, about the issue.

"These days social life overlaps private life," she explained when I asked her if she could identify the threshold between social life and private life. She reiterated the words I said earlier about us, the homo-sapiens being a 'social animal', and we both had a long entertaining conversation. Only after a few days, my poor friend was mercilessly insulted on a social media platform by a family member for no reason. The family feud which should have stayed within the family was brought out in a public forum much to her astonishment. "I cannot degrade myself down to this level and engage in it," she told me sadly.

It led me to my dilemma of determining private and social life again. If cyberspace social life takes over the physical one, and again, overlaps the private life, we should better watch out for the consequences. The picture does not seem to be a rosy one.

According to American social scientist William Ogburn, 'cultural lag' is a common societal phenomenon due to the tendency of material culture to evolve and change rapidly and voluminously while non-material culture tends to resist change and remain fixed for a far longer period of time.

Therefore, we accept the new technology easily but not the non-material culture – like ideology, values and morality. As far as I remember, our older generations were always taught to have moral and cultural values and tried to pass those to us. Is it us who could not accept those and forward it to the next generation?

"Any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in Mankind," – the words of John Donne have always been thought-provoking to me. We are indeed a part of mankind, society. We would always love to follow others and enjoy the feeling of not being abandoned. Nevertheless, our individuality should stand apart amid the togetherness and prevent us from drifting away.