Together in Loneliness

The first thing that we search each time we open our eyes in the morning is our cell phone. We are connected to the world through it, connected to our world. Our lives depend on it. It’s a little thing that have a huge psychological impact on us, including the way we construct our self-concept and make an interaction with others.

Social interaction is a dynamic relation between one and another human. Meaning, perception, even social structure created by social interaction. Social interaction happen when we two people meet and having a conversation, discussion, or fight and hit each other. The activity where there are an action and reaction between two people or more.

As the technology born, the way of social interaction change gradually. It divided into two ways. An interaction that happen in real life happen in real time and space with real people, and an interaction that happen through our gadget, technology, internet, an “illusion world”. Everything are different in illusion world. We interact in much different way. We make a new ways of social interaction and communication.

We found almost everyone are focus with their gadget in a public space. Two people sit side by side in a bus without even care how a stranger beside them looks like. A couple busy with their own cell phone in their candle light dinner. A family dinner where every family members are playing their cell phone. That all are a common things that we see each day. Gadget isn’t a lifestyle anymore, it’s a life, an oxygen, we live through it in each moment. We depend on it as we couldn’t breath without it.

We love playing gadget as it feels always accompany us as a friend, assistant, anything that you need. It makes you feel connected and accompanied. We can control what we say, we can present or create ourselves the way we want to be in “illusion world”. Our conversation become text. We think before we send or share. We edit. In real life, espesially in conversation, we can’t completely control what we say, and it takes place in a real time.



In one way we may feel connected and accompanied, but sadly in real space and time, we are alone. We stare at cell phone not eyes, touch the screen not skin, laugh at text not people. We spend so many times lives in chat, social media, internet, until we forget how to live and interact in real life. The connection makes us feel together without being together. Conversation become a hard thing to do.

Without social media, we may feel alone and left out from the world. Why? Because we made a perception that by keeping contant and connected with our “illusion” world took us away from loneliness. Even in fact we are alone. It made connected together in loneliness. It have a big impact on how we keep in touch with people. But don’t forget with our natural behavior, our native way of interaction. Go out, make a conversation with real people in real time and space. Learn how to talk instead how to text. Don’t let the technology fade out our natural interaction. Make the balance between our real life and “illusion” life.




Reference:
　　Mulyana, Deddy. Pengantar Ilmu Komunikasi. Bandung: Remaja Rosdakarya, 2013.
　　Setiadi, Elly M., and Usman Kolip. Pengantar Sosiologi. Jakarta: Prenada Media Goup, 2011.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-flux/201410/the-importance-being-alone opened at April 22, 2015.