Social anxiety has taken over our real world communication – The Cauldron
By Ibrahim Mustafa
As long as the underdeveloped standards of today continue to be supported by the defeated people of today, my mind will remain unrested. Barriers are built and eye contact is avoided due to the uneasy thoughts of being a disdained burden. Ridicule seems to be in nowadays, and it empathizes little concern or respect to people. If we continue to support such behaviors, our social standards will continue to diminish. Who knows what will be of the new standards?
Defeat comes in two ways. The first is having been beaten in a battle or other contest. The second is demoralized and overcome by adversity. Due to the absence of love in society, self-battle has become an everyday struggle. People who are afraid to make eye contact — let alone speak to someone riding the same elevator as them — are prime examples of how fear is existent in today’s world. Be respectful enough to greet the person or people riding the elevator instead of turning to your cell phone as a social escape route. Similar situations as this one supports my claim that ridicule is advocated in today’s society. In my opinion, social anxiety is existent but refusing to fight back and letting it control your every move says more about you than it does about social anxiety itself.
We must not remain victims. People may feel as if they are being awkward while dealing with another person, but the other person may not even notice. I like to use an example of old people. I find old people enjoy sparking up conversations with random people, and our generation may find it awkward and odd to do that. What’s also strange is that our generation craves attention from other people, but rejects the idea of going out of their way in person to get it. Standards must change. We must support the idea of communication in person rather than just online.
The real world becomes a better place when we stop running away from it. If we reflect upon the norms of today, you’ll find the real world is an escape route from the social media world that we are all so invested in. We may be surrounded by people but turn to our phones to avoid social interaction. It’s so easy to claim you have social anxiety and use it as an excuse to avoid doing everyday human interaction. We need to come out of our imaginary shells that protect us.
Empathy — or feeling — is what the generation of today is so afraid of. It’s okay to feel emotions that are rejected, such as feeling embarrassed, shy and awkward. All of these feelings are rejected by the people of today. If you give it thought, these feelings aren’t negative. We must experience these feelings to grow and be able to walk away from them. If we truly wish to break away from these traits, simply being as stiff as peanut and waiting for a nutcracker to break you loose from your shell won’t happen. Living in a first world country makes it extremely difficult not to create a problem for yourself out of nothing. Other countries have it so much worse than us, and the standards we settle for in this country need to be changed.