Real Life, Virtual Life : Sujata Salvi

We humans are created quintessentially. Every human being is born with unique features, characteristics, talent, skills and potential to survive in this world. We are overhearing about virtual life since a decade. When the new life form was instigated, we were fascinated by this term “Virtual Life”. Virtual life brings our imaginations to reality but is this for real? Are we intersecting the thin borderline between reality and virtuality? Is our life being narrowed to virtual reality only? Do we not care about our precious Real life?

When we define “Virtual” it means that which does not exist physically so the meaning itself has a disclaimer that it does not exist! So, what is so gripping and fascinating about virtual life? With its mightiness it takes us to a distinct magnitude of imaginations, illusions and fascinations.

Over the last few years, virtual life is getting deserving attention. The biggest contributing factor to this is the easy availability of all social platforms. The GenNext is well-versed with social media platforms. The available platforms take you to a whole new world that’s filled with your favorite activities like gaming, connecting with people, sharing your intense thoughts and views, displaying a knockoff which the real world would not accept. Virtual life is limitless! In recent years where virtual life has taken a plunge, it also comes with a dark side. As a result, few individuals cross the thin line between real and virtual life unknowingly.

It begins with setting up a good profile with a beautiful picture, giving every minute details, flaunting your likes, dislikes. This develops attraction amongst the people you are connected on social media. They start applauding you and commenting for whoever you are. Kids these days go leaps and bounds to maintain a social profile. Your real-life presence descends making your family and loved ones worried. You get disconnected from the real world. The reciprocity with people around you is lost and you are isolated. Isolation in turn brings negativity where your liveliness is succumbed to virtual life. Soon the shine of glamorous social platform starts withering.

People that fit in several age brackets use social media. Virtual life now is introduced at adolescence. This particular age group is not ripe to take the criticism. As they know only the Pros of social media and not the Cons. Soon they fall prey to the dark side of virtual life. They sulk in the negativity due to criticism, as there is no one for their rescue because such topics are difficult to be shared with parents, elders, friends,etc. So they choose to stay alone. Sometime the situation gets worse, traumatized by the negativity, negligence and criticism by socially connected people seem to shake their soul so badly that they get provoked to do suicidal acts and self-destruction. The effect of social criticism and an unhealthy state of mind often leads them to end their lives. That’s when we often hear teenagers committing suicide due to rejection in a relation, inferiority complex, getting conned online, loosing online games.

Here I would enlighten the readers that virtual life is what we have created, and real life is created by the Almighty. We must maintain the distance between these two and create awareness among younger minds in our family, around us or be watchful in case you are one of them. We as part of the society must examine ourselves, does Virtual life really count at the end of the day or the family, always remember, human being is a social animal and not a social media freak!

Sujata Salvi holds an engineering degree from Pune university. She started her career as support engineer and climbed the ladder to lead an IT organization as a COO. Through her writing she puts forth the journeys of common man’s life with authenticity. Her writings capture the changing dynamics oflife in todays language. With a dynamic perspective Sujata is trying to capture all possible aspects of life through her writings in fiction, nonfiction, drama, literature, etc. She is following her passion to write and is set on a journey to explore the bright side of expressing. With writing she also dears reading.The writings mostly contain the emotional and sentimental front.

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