Is the Screen Where My Eyes Really Belong?

It all boils down to dopamine and oxytocin - two important chemicals that our brains produce. Facebook may have aced the rankings of top social networking sites, back in 2004, even amongst its predecessors, but before there were social networking sites known such as Friends United and MySpace. 

However, online social networking really stretches back to 1978 when Ward Christensen, co-founder of the CBBS bulletin board, the first bulletin board (BBS) ever brought online and his partner Randy Seuss, started development during a blizzard in Chicago, Illinois and officially established CBBS four weeks later, on February 16, 1978.

History

1978

 

- Ward Christensen and Randy Suess, two computer fans, invented the CBBS system to inform their friends about meetings, make announcements and share information.

1993:

– Several students from the University of Illinois developed Mosaic, which was presented as the first browser adapted for the general public.

– Launch of GeoCities, a service that allows users to create their own web pages.

1995:

• The Web has one million websites.

1997:

•  GeoCities surpasses one million users.
•  AOL Instant Messenger allows Internet chat.
•  Blogging begins.
• Google launches.

• Yahoo! buys GeoCities for 3.57 billion dollars.
• The Blogger platform launches.

– The dot-com bubble burst and the future of Internet is more uncertain than ever.

2000:

• 70 million computers are connected to the Internet. 
• Friendster launches. 
• The social network reaches 3 million users in just three months.

2002:

•  AOL has already reached 34 million users.
•  MySpace is launched.

2003: 

•  Google buys the Blogger platform
• Second Life launches.
• LinkedIn launches social network for professionals.

2004:

•  Facebook is born. An unknown investor offers Mark Zuckerberg $10 million to buy the famous social network. Facebook founder declines the offer.
•  MySpace surpasses Friendster in number of page views.
•  Digg launches.
•  Bebo – an acronym for blog early, blog often – launches as another social networking site.

2005:

•  News Corp. buys MySpace for $580 million.
•  Viacom offers to buy Facebook for $75 million, but the social network rejects the offer.
•  Friends Reunited, which already has 15 million users, is sold to the ITV television network.
•  YouTube is launched.
•  MySpace is the most popular social network in the U.S.

2006: 

• Viacom returns with an offer to to buy Facebook for $1.5 billion, but the deal falls through. Yahoo! also made an offer of $1 billion to take over the social network, but Facebook declined.
•  Google generates about 400 million searches every day.
•  Twitter is born.

           2007: 

• Facebook surpasses MySpace in number of unique users per month.
•  Google makes an offer of 15 billion dollars to buy Facebook.
•  Apple introduces the iPhone.

2008: 

• Facebook is now the largest social network worldwide with over 200 million users. The social network’s traffic is twice that of MySpace.
•  AOL buys Bebo.
•  Facebook tries to buy Twitter for 500 million dollars.
•  Tumblr launches.

2009: 

•  Twitter breaks the news of a plane crash in the Hudson River.
• “Unfriend” is the New Oxford Dictionary word of the year.
• – Microsoft launches Bing to compete directly with Yahoo and Google.
• – Facebook surpasses 400 million users and also surpasses Google in weekly traffic.
• – MySpace loses its popularity and the number of users shrinks to 57 million.

2010: 

•  In order to compete with Facebook and Twitter, Google launches Buzz, a social network built into Gmail.
•  There are an estimated 1.97 billion users worldwide, representing 30 percent of the population.
•  AOL sells Bebo to Criterion Capital Partners.
•  Apple launches the iPad.
•  The Internet surpasses newspapers as main source of information among Americans.– Tumblr generates more than 1 billion page views per month and over 2 million daily posts.– Pinterest launches.
• There are over 550 million users on Facebook, 65 million tweets sent per day, and 2 billion YouTube videos watched each day.– LinkedIn now has 90 million users worldwide and goes public.

2011: 

•  Apple launches the music social network Ping.
•  News Corp. sells MySpace to digital media firm Specific Media for $35 million.
•  MySpace and Bebo are redesigned to compete with Facebook and Twitter.
•  Facebook reaches an annual revenue of 3.7 billion dollars.
•  Google + launches.
• Pinterest launches as a content curation site.
• Pinterest competitor Snip.it launches.    

2012:  

• Facebook files for an IPO. At its premiere in the stock trading floors, the network aims to collect 10 billion dollars. Its value is estimated between 75 and 100 billion dollars.
• – Twitter generates 12,233 tweets per second during the Super Bowl.    

However, modern technology which is intended to be an advantage for us actually can turn out to be a great source of loneliness; a trap we don't even see ourselves walking into! It’s just the NEED to BE & REMAIN CONNECTED that evokes the human mind to stay fixated to technological devices.

I know I’m in the room with you, but my mind is somewhere else – its on my next email, or my next whatsapp or i-messege! How can we break free from this social technology and INSTEAD turn to ACTUAL ‘face-face’ communication? Almost all our relationships can be termed as superficial or on the verge of getting there.

"Is a screen supposed to define our happiness or are we supposed to reach out and make those human connections worthwhile and HUMAN?" Our our human connections filtered out by the noise of social media? As I was physically present in the room my mind was wandering in a hundred thousand places and I just wish that wasn't so BECAUSE the whole purpose was actually to be there and spend time with FAMIL!, not get sucked up by technology!

Loneliness is the sense of feeling alone and one can only feel alone when one has lost touch with one’s inner self. It is very important to hold one’s self in high regard, high values and more importantly the quality of the relationships rather than the “quantity of the relationships” held. 

“I was recently in US, sitting with my sister but I couldn't help myself from fidgeting with my cell-phone – the Twitter updates, the Facebook updates, the Gmail updates and the constant chatter of the what-sapp. When is a time to disconnect and have time to connect to the people who matter to you in your real life?

I felt horrible at the end, but realised how sucked into this trap I had become – the social media bubble. WE NEED TO BREAK FREE FOR SOMETIME. IMAGINE OUR LIVES BACK IN THE DAY BEFORE 2004 WHEN THERE WAS NO SOCIAL MEDIA CONTROLLING US LIKE THIS?

Like every boon, social media has given us, we need to control ourselves also and restrain its usage before we become mere zombies.  

"As users, we blindly trust technology without understanding it"

Social media is definitely a revolutionary tool in our contemporary lives; right from connecting long lost friends to linking professionals who seek employment it is the best way to offer one of the best prospects’ to socialise with the world from home. 

There are over a billion active users on Facebook, more then 700 millionTwitterati and over 800 million active Instagrammers all of whom provide business opportunities to independent sellers and enterprises. 

As we can see from the history of social networking, we can safely conclude that there will be new innovations. However, some aspects of life are timeless such as the value of face-to-face communication.