Keeping it real with offline networking
We here at uberlife are on a mission to knock down social barriers to make the real world a more connected place.
There’s nothing quite like getting to know someone new. It’s amazing how much you can learn about and from that person within such a short amount of face time. We humans are social animals and interacting up close and personally with each other is something we were born to do, not only to learn and collaborate efficiently but also for the survival of our race.
This potential of connecting with others encourages us to get out there, do new things and build up a group of friends and people around us that make our lives richer.
However oddly the last 4-5 years of compulsive online social networking has made it commonplace to spend more time talking to people via a screen online rather than face-to-face offline. Whilst your “network” of friends might be getting bigger the actual real life social connections between you and these friends might just be getting weaker.
The main difference has to lie in how genuine the connection between two people is when interacting online and offline. An online connection has certain limitations when compared to an offline connection, there’s a sense of anonymity behind the online connection due to the fact that social networks allow people to hide behind their profiles. Remember that the average person’s profile is made up of information that they’re happy for a stranger/acquaintance to see.
A recent Cornell University study found that Facebook allows users to put their best faces forward in their online profiles and compared the revolutionary social networking site to a mirror image of ourselves, only better. By editing and filtering what information the virtual world sees, users can portray an enhanced version of themselves.
In stark contrast, there is a genuine nature to real life social situations: the unique aspects of people’s personalities are plain to see and it’s these tiny bits of information that are what make us, as people, so wonderfully complex and interesting to each other with our defining character traits and intricacies. As a result, real world connections between 2 or more people is where the deepest value lies, this is how solid friendships and relationships are cemented, and this cannot be achieved online.
So for us at uberlife, we believe that we cannot live truly rich lives by prioritizing our online relationships over offline. It is our mission to use the power of our online networks however to spark more real world interactions and relationship building so we can enjoy the best of both worlds.
