Humaneness is described as the sympathetic concern of the well-being of other in the English dictionary. It can also be said to be the quality of consideration or compassion for others. In Ren (Confucianism), humaneness is defined as Human-ness, the essence of the being human. And it further says the way of humaneness is human interaction. I am going to be focusing on the human interaction part. How much do we interact physically with each other in this new social media era? Why have smartphones depleted our human interaction with others and our environment?

In this social media era, with smartphones becoming widely available at affordable prices, and internet data subscription getting cheaper, physical human interaction has been suffering. The way people (especially teenagers and youths) are always immersed in their phones and the internet instead of connecting with the people around them in their environment is becoming alarming. The importance of the internet and social media cannot be overemphasized, but the adverse effects it is having on us should not be neglected.

There is a lot that can be learned on the internet. My own personal quote is that “you would be overwhelmed by the information on the internet”. We also connect and network on the social media, but at what cost? If you walk into a fast food restaurant right now, you would see people on the same table with their faces glued to their smartphones trying to upload pictures they’d just snapped on Facebook, SnapChat, and Instagram. This little gesture of using the phone instead of focusing on bonding with the people you are out with is harmful.

Imagine I am out on a date with my girlfriend. I am trying to reply my messages on WhatsApp while she is busy moderating her notifications on Facebook. This clearly shows that we are spending time together but we are not actually together. We are living in a world where constant seeking of likes and comments on social media contents is more important than going out and meeting people for real. We have replaced the normal reality with virtual reality. Girls now feel obliged to wake up each morning, bath, makeup and dress-up in different dresses just to snap pictures in various poses and upload on the social media. This does mean they are leaving their homes. Boys are out in a joint or location and they are constantly updating their statuses to their online friends/followers just for show.

It is more comfortable for people to pour out their minds on the social media to people who literally do not care, instead of sharing their thoughts with close family members and friends. Now, people assume they know a lot about you when they visit your social media profile and timelines. We are eager to share recent happenings in our lives first on the social media, whereas, our friends and family members may only get to know about these things if they are friends with us on our social media. The number of time husbands and wives spend connecting with their online friends on the social media, with children also addicted to the nice games on smartphones, families miss unique opportunities to further bond and connect physically. What we have now is children being trained by the internet and getting pressured by peers on the social media. We can’t ignore the pornography and other illicit contents that should be controlled by parents on children’s smartphones, but because the parents are also busy on their own social media platforms to notice, nobody checks the children.

In most of the recent suicide cases, investigations always tend to show suicide victims had been dropping hints about their problems on social media platforms long before they take their own lives. Their posts show different patterns of stress and depression. All these signs may never be picked up by close friends and family members in real life.

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