World is changing so fast and with advancement in technology almost every sphere of life is undergoing through some changes. All these developments, revolutionary concepts and progresses have totally changed the way we used to live in our “Good Old Days”! Now, discovery of Internet and World Wide Web has left all other earlier discoveries like ‘fire’ and ‘wheel’ far behind. Though it is bringing so many positive changes in our lives, but just like any other invention, even this is not fool-proof.

Just have a look around you. Can you see even a single person from the age of 15 to 50 who is still blissfully unaware from its obsession? No doubt that it is sooo useful in a lot of aspects, but is it even important than your own REAL life? The irony of the situation is that it has addicted our minds so much that we have actually started preferring virtual relations to actual physical ones. All old standards of viewing relations and judging a person are going into vain because of this.

For instance, these days even an introvert would be having hundreds of friends on his various networking sites. So does that mean that psychologists should change the way they observe and determine someone’s personality? As obviously we all feel that a person having more friends would be more social, when in fact in case of virtual world; it just means that the concerned person is having loads of time on his hands to spend it on virtual networking.

If a person is visible on all networking sites and he manages all his accounts really well, have time to tweet and retweet a lot of things, changes his facebook status after every hour or so, replies to each and everyone’s comment, post, tweet and scrap; do you seriously feel that he would be having time for his real life commitments at all?

I know Blackberry and I-phones have changed the scenario and it is much more simpler for an individual to get in touch with the virtual world. But, then again would you prefer your partner or parent or a friend to be like this, who would be always texting and typing on his device to others even when he is with you, rather than actually talking to you?

I know, girls are also very much tech-savvy these days. But, we should never forget that real life relations are much more important and fruitful than these Online ones. I have a personal experience to share. I have always been an ambivert personality. But, even then I am having a lot of friends on my facebook friends list. Earlier I never divulged each and everything to anyone around me (no matter he/she is my good friend or not). But, due to facebook status messages, I changed the way I used to share information. After sometime I genuinely started feeling that these all are my good friends.

But, now few days back when something very important happened in my life, I came to know about truth of these relations. Only those persons stood by me, who were actually good friends of mine from the beginning. And all these new-found facebook friends (though they were all acquaintances of mine, as I never add any person to my account with whom I have never come in face-to-face contact); didn’t even shed a single word from their keyboards to show their support for me. So, I am off to clearing all that garbage now from my account. I know I would just be ending with just a few number of friends on my account now, but I would be sure that they are my REAL friends.

 I am sure you guys still remember the incident of Simone Back, who posted a suicide status on Facebook and no one took it seriously. She had more than 1000 friends in her account and nobody cared enough to pay any attention. In fact some even accused her by comments that she was trying to have their attention. Finally she killed herself. 

So, what I want to explain is that we often misjudge persons around us, even when we meet them personally where we can observe their non-verbal responses too. Then it is a fact that this observation becomes even tougher in case of virtual relations. So, best bet is to never depend upon them and choose your cyber-pals with great caution.

Never let the demarcation line between virtual and real world gets fade away. Everybody is in favor of believing in their gut feeling while starting any new association. Then how can we forget that computer and internet are not HUMANS, that they don’t have feelings, guts and intuitions. Virtual is VIRTUAL and not REAL.