Indiviuals make the society and if online platforms are affecting individual personalities, it is only a matter of time that they will shape social structures, too.
According to Dr Saliha Afridi, clinical psychologist and director of a clinic in Dubai, exposure to online cultures and social norms is gradually changing the way our brains are wired.
“When you are online, you develop habits that are a lot less considerate. Whether it is to do with the anonymity or even the fact that there is a screen between you, people can be a lot more blunt,” she told Gulf News.
“It is the same when you are in traffic. If you stick your head out and wave, they’ll let you through. If you have your window rolled up, they might not give you way. There is something about being able to see someone’s face. There must be something biologically witin us that allows us to manage other people’s feelings when we see their faces,” she said.
Consequently, a rude action does not necessarily get corrected in an online interaction, whether with a stranger or an acquaintance. Do that enough number of times and your general behaviour can, quite possibly, become rude.
“The interaction that a person has face-to-face, eye-to-eye, heart-to-heart, actualy wires our brain in certain neuropathic ways and because we are not doing that our brains are getting rewired, we are becoming robotoic,” Dr Afridi said.
“We are now showing signs of being on the autistic spectrum where we aren’t able to engage in social settings because we are now wired differently and feel uncomfortable in social settings.”
And while it is easy to blame the youth on socially deviant behaviour, older people might not be any less guilty of poor social behaviour.
“We grew up in a generation of television and media, so our brains are almost programmed to think that if it is on the screen, it is not real. Somewhere in our consciousness, if there is a screen between people, then what is happening is not real,” she said.
Conseuquently, people are becoming more self-obsessed, less empathetic and emotionally intelligent. That does not bode well for future societies.
“We are suffering from a narcissm epidemic with people being self-absorbed because of popularity on online platforms. This does carry over into personality development, especially teenagers who are now trying to form their personalities. Because so much of their personality is online, it becomes problematic. The entire focus is on ‘show thyself’ instead of ‘know thyself’ giving them very little chance to reflect and develop their emotional intelligence. The lack of social skills will then have all kinds of impact on their relationships.”
