While a number of specialists indicated that events and holidays are beautiful occasions that bring people together, support family ties and renew social relations, they assured Okaz that social media platforms cannot be a substitute for customs, traditions, familiarity, holiday greetings, exchange of visits and memories. Silent greeting messages cannot be a substitute for visits to family, neighbors and friends.
Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology, Dr. Ahmed Amr Abdullah, believes that for most people, the holidays are considered an enjoyable time of the year filled with joy, religious rituals and social gatherings. Rather, it is a moment of victory over oneself after completing fasting and good deeds in the month of Ramadan, but for some people it represents For them, this period is a state of sadness, self-reflection, loneliness, and anxiety, and it is usually a temporary state. Social media platforms focus during this period on displaying pictures of families and friends in a state of fun and happiness, while such pictures and scenes represent some feelings of sadness due to the absence of social support and support they have, or evoke memories that are difficult to replace today, so a state of comparisons with others begins, whether on social media. Or these comparisons may extend to the neighbors, or that such social interactions are uncomfortable for them, such as family events and visits, or difficult to achieve as a result of family disputes, or that it is difficult for them to meet the material needs of their family members.
Virtual greetings
Amr added that after the holidays were based on realistic physical contact by visiting the grandparents’ house or the old house and meeting with family and relatives, many people, with the spread of communication technology, have become dependent on social media platforms for their communication. Due to its role in facilitating communication in speed, spread and low costs, it cannot be a sufficient substitute for direct communication even in light of the dominance of the virtual world. In spite of this, the congratulations and greetings, with all the most beautiful expressions of love and friendliness they carry, their social and emotional impact on the souls of individuals will remain transient and superficial to the maximum extent that will not exceed the time of receiving the message. Unfortunately, many of the customs and traditions that used to make people happy have disappeared, and the covid-19 pandemic came to enhance virtual greetings as a kind of precautionary measure. The reality in which the children of the family, friends of the neighborhood, or neighbors participate, but smart phones and the applications they contain have become playing the alternative role of play, entertainment, activities, and communication. It can cut the time people spend on activities that make them feel good. We do not blame the child or the teenager at the time when we find him confined to his room during the holidays, and this is one of the biggest differences in the life of the current generation compared to previous generations in celebrating the holidays, in that they spend much less time communicating with their peers in reality and more time communicating virtually.
Optional isolation
Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology, Dr. Ahmed Amr Abdullah, indicates that there are two types of social motives behind the use of smart phones in general and social media platforms in particular during the festive period, either for social reinforcement or social compensation, if the use is motivated by social reinforcement, then there is no harm in Therefore, it is used here as an additional opportunity to interact with others, such as greetings and preparing for social visits realistically or for a good logical reason when the distances between expatriates and their families are shortened, while if the use is motivated by social compensation, by motive of hiding from the face of relatives and friends through social communication, the use here will be reinforced. for social anxiety.
Amr adds: Since communicating with family and friends virtually is less emotionally satisfying compared to real-world communication, we are not surprised when we find that individuals who spend more time on social media feel isolated, or that their feeling of isolation may encourage them to overuse social media. Instead of the individual making family visits during the holidays and watching entertainment programs with his family and friends as it was in the past.. he has become performing it alone on the Internet, as these smart devices have drawn an unfamiliar field of relationships based on virtual communication through computers and networks, so individuals have become virtual, and objects Written dialogue What made the individual confined to his room, communicate with millions of individuals. This contributed to the negative impact on social relations and the noticeable decrease in participation in social events and holidays with family, friends and relatives, as some of them indicate that the absence of sound in online communication reduces the degree of interaction and transmission of human feelings, which is called cold communication.
The nuclear family!
The social counselor, Muhammad bin Saad Al Dhiab, believes that social networking sites have become an integral part of the life of societies because of their ease of use and their various advantages, and in terms of communicating with relatives, their impact is negative. People do not know about your relative except for scales. Years pass, and then one of us is surprised when someone kisses his head, and his nephew or sister finds him as if he is seeing him for the first time.
Al Dhiab reported that there is a term in sociology called the “extended family” and contrasted with the other model (the nuclear family). Grandparents and grandchildren The means of communication contributed to the promotion of such models, in contrast to the socially healthy extended families, in which the grandfather, grandmother, grandchildren and uncles live in one house, and the child in such environments grows up more mature and learns life skills better than the other child who grows up in nuclear families.
double-edged sword
Al Dhiab believes that technology is a double-edged sword, as it has positives, but it also has negatives, including the loss of family members’ sense of family security, which is considered a human need, and the destabilization of family cohesion, as social media reduces the cohesion of family members, which in turn leads to problems Social, such as tendencies to be isolated, depressed, and lack of passion towards any social contact, and thus the time periods spent by family members with each other will be reduced. Among the negative aspects is the failure of family members to communicate in the correct way, which limits their possession of communication skills, poor acquisition of social skills, and addiction to the use of social networking sites, which leads to the preoccupation of each family member with his phone, which is negatively reflected on the cohesion of family members and their interaction with each other, and the children's feeling of lack of support Their parents have them, as a result of parents using these sites in a way that affects communication with their children.
And Al Dhiab indicated that many members of the community have become convinced that letters dispense with meetings and visits, which enhances the disintegration and separation of society and deepens the gap between relatives and kinship, which makes the individual feel insecure and reach psychological fragility, and you find him collapsing at the nearest challenge in life as a result of his insecurity. And support from the foster family, which is the reference for the individual and the source of safety and support for him in his life against the difficulties he faces in his life.
The Dhiab family hopes to return to what the fathers and grandfathers used to do in terms of correct communication from the beginning of the Eid days, and everyone who reads my words, I advise him to know that the connection of the womb is linked to the Throne of the Most Gracious.
Smart devices.. Innocence
The researcher in educational psychology, Muhammad bin Obaid Al-Ghamdi, says: “We often hear about accusations leveled against smart devices that they have brought distances closer and distanced between people, but such accusations are not realistic and are just a kind of nostalgia for the past with all its events, people, tools and methods that were commensurate with Society at its time and does not fit with society at the present time, we have to believe that each era and time has a special way of communication, and the way of this era is communication through smart devices and social networking sites ».
Al-Ghamdi pointed out that social media does not substitute for real communication and does not achieve social satisfaction, but it remains one of the good alternatives when direct communication is not possible, so this is a call to stop accusing technology of causing a gap between family and relatives, and we must discipline ourselves by using it in the manner The correct thing is that we assume responsibility towards our families, relatives, and friends by inviting them on occasions and holidays and responding to their invitations so that we can combine real communication with communication through technology.
Bring us together or separate us?
Sheikh Riyad bin Odeh Al-Huwaimel says that each society and family has customs and traditions that suit it and have a great role in establishing the morals, etiquette and peace of this family, and in light of these changes and civilizational development, reality may dictate that some families are affected by that social communication with messages, but we note that this influence may have affected some of the youth And the young women did not get along with their grandfathers with the useful and followed communication within the family. This matter is not a phenomenon, but rather a shortcoming for some, as there are some open and large councils currently that have a great role in communication and physical and mental presence, and there are various diwans for the family and their relatives, and there are large and small families that meet on occasions, and there is no doubt that communication devices have a great role in communicating with the wombs and relatives sometimes .
As for the Mayor of Ras Tanura Governorate, Farhan Amesh Al-Harbi, he said that the Eid between the past and the present differed greatly with the developments that occurred in society and the entry of technology into people’s lives with the spread of so-called smart phones and their indirect social communication programs. In the past, people used to communicate in What is between them through visits and meeting in councils and diwans of different ages, and the councils, like schools, play a prominent role in influencing the lives of their youth. The elder speaks and everyone listens to him, then they exchange parties to talk. And they exchange expressions of congratulations and blessings, and you see the smile on everyone’s faces, and at the present time many people tend to be isolated and live an unrealistic life by communicating with people who often do not live in its surroundings, so the question here imposes itself: Did social media bring us together or separate us?
For his part, citizen Faisal Al-Shammari explained that electronic congratulations never replace social relations on holidays and occasions, pointing out that the current social media has collected many problems, and among its disadvantages is severing social relations and destroying communication between people, and shortening the relationship in electronic messages, especially on special occasions. and holidays. Al-Shammari added that the silent greeting messages consist of copying and pasting and do not carry any feeling in the soul to express joy or relief.
Mohammed Al-Shahrani (Dammam) @mffaa1