Dating : Social Media: A Place Where One Can be Friendless Despite Having a Thousand Friends.

It was my younger sister’s eighteenth birthday today. Do you know how she spent her birthday? Crying her eyes out on my shoulders. I felt bad for her but honestly, she made me laugh so hard not because she is an ugly crier but because of the reason she told me that made her tear up. “why do I have so many followers on Instagram?” she said. I told her that if that is the reason why she is crying then I wonder how Cristiano Ronaldo must feel, he is the most followed person on Instagram with more than 200 million followers and she has only about 2000. She did not reply to me with the usual “ not funny” line she always says to me whenever I crack stupid jokes. That’s when I understood that something was really worrying her.

I gave her a tight hug and asked her what is the matter? “ No one wished me except you and our parents, Every year my friends used to come to our house to celebrate, how can they forget? They did not put a story, no call at least they could have texted me ” she said. She told me that after her friends went to different cities for college, they made new friends there, She has been in touch with them only through social media and thus she was expecting that they at least wished her on stories or through text. She said “ These people commented on every picture of mine, liked each of my pictures, mentioned me in those stories asking me to play those stupid embarrassing games and I played them because my friends asked me to. My college friends also forgot? I mean I mentioned my birth date in my bio. Yet no one wished me? Why do I have so many followers, so many fake friends who do not even remember my birthday? Why do they put stories tagging me as their best friend on friendship day when they can’t even remember to wish me on birthday”.

For me, it was a very trivial and silly issue but I thought maybe for today’s generation’s eighteen-year-olds, it could be a big thing. I knew how to cheer her up, I grabbed my phone and played her favorite song and I started dancing, I tried to make her dance but she is very stubborn so I tickled her she tried hard to control her laughter but failed miserably and then I made her dance forcefully. Finally, she had that precious smile on her face again. By that time the cake was ready and our parents were waiting. We had the cake cutting ceremony and then I made her watch my favorite comedy movie which I can’t believe, she had never watched. She was laughing and happy again and she hugged me tightly and told me “ Mumma, papa and you are all that matter to me, I love you, sis.” “ I love you too my angel” I replied and said good night.

In today’s day and age, we live in this fake world of likes and follows, so consumed in how many likes we get, how many comments we get, which filter to use on our pics and how many followers we have that we don’t really care about the real world and the real-world relationships. People can have a million followers but how many of those followers actually care about them. We are so addicted and show such determination in making our pictures and posts look perfect to please our followers whom we hardly know and who hardly care about us and for what? Just for some stupid likes and fake flattery comments just to stroke our egos. My eighteen-year-old sister is an Instagram addict and was living in this castle of glass which broke today. Tomorrow when she wakes up, I will make her understand that she should make some real friends in this real-world, not on these social media sites otherwise she will always find herself friendless despite having a thousand followers or friends on social media.