Social Media, Is It 'That' Social?

The word 'social' simply relates to us intermingle in the society. As an individual, we dwell and interact in the mass in order to live the life. And being social is everyone's innate desire. Though few prefer not so social and we somehow attribute them as anti-social individuals. 

As the world of technology really touches our private life. Internet has its means and breakthrough to create or facilitate people to become social and easier. Nonetheless, now it somehow has rule people. Especially when it comes to the term social. 

The web serve us, you, me and everyone, as medium to become social creature. But is it 'that' social? 

To cater this social aspiration and dynamic, developers create the platform called the social media. There are numerous social media platforms available in the internet. The basic micro-blogging like (the late) Friendster is one of the examples. But it had somehow lost its members since the social media mogul Mark Zuckerberg and friends created Facebook in 2004, and went worldwide around 2007. 

In 2008, there came a simplistic 140-ish characters social media platform, Twitter. It is where users can actually 'tweet' like a twitter bird all day long. And the growth of social media platforms become bulkier since the hype happened. Numbers of people joining have been growing exponentially since. 

Then, can we still whether social media is 'that' social? A new kind of hangout mode occurring IRL since social media boom. It is somehow awkward. Commonly, when some people or friends came to a table to start a chit-chat. But now, they sat and pulled out their gadgets. They would stare down to their cellphone or tablet. 

The supposedly-friendly situation among friends was mute for quite long pause. They were too busy checking stuff in their gadgets. Then, they talked to each other for about 5 minutes. Just to make sure everyone was still sitting. 

Then, they went back checking their gadgets for whatsoever things going on in their timeline or continuing their game. Sadly, this mode repeated throughout the hangout session among them. 

Do such interaction can be attributed as social interaction?

Social Media, Imaginary versus Sensing Proposition 

What I could see most often for people who think they are 'social enough' in social media, is that they prefer imaginary proposition to sensing proposition.