Name – Aditi Sharma

Age - 18 years

About Myself – I love my life…..I love taking risks, give me a mountain and I am ready to bungee jump , give me a car and I am ready to see how fast it can go.

Written above is what you would a call a run of the mill online community profile page of anybody whose everybody. Its strange isn’t it how we prefer to make our selves sound a lot more affable on a web page and make people believe what they read and judge us by our profile than who we actually. The ‘Net indeed plays a convincing role as a surrogate reality for those who become addicted to it. In the dot com world the profile page is our entry into a parallel universe. You could be a 24 year old stud muffin but in reality a 30 something couch potato still living in with his parents but definitely one to make sure his profile page does not even give a whiff of that.

In the last decade internet users have seen many online communities being created , starting a buzz and within a matter of time it fizzles out only to become members of the next online community that everybody seems to be a member off. It started with 6 degrees setting the trend followed by friendster ,orkut , myspace and facebook ruling the roost with more than 70 million active members has put in the position of the “second most trafficked social media in the world”. These statistics aren’t just figures but they represent people, people who are willing to take time off from their reality and focus on their virtual world.

This makes me pose the question why do people join online communities? What is it about virtual reality that has us going back for more….Why is it that we would rather buy someone firewhisky on facebook instead of taking time off and buying the drink for real.

The answer is simple research in social psychology has revealed different motivations for individuals to join regular online communities. We humans suffer from a need to belong and be affiliated with others. On line communities provide individuals with a source of information and help in achieving goals and, according to social identity theory, people form a social identity of values, attitudes and behavioral intentions from the perceived membership in distinct self-inclusive real or imagined social groups. A person’s self identity typically results from the membership in a preexisting self-inclusive social group. These motivations for joining traditional, face-to-face groups can be extended to examine membership in virtual communities like facebook and orkut.

Online Communities no doubt is one of the most effective ways of keeping in touch with friends and family all over the world , advertisers are willing to spend upto 14 billion dollars just to marked their product as it is by far the best way to get the word across. It keeps you aware of what is going on around the world, it compels to have an opinion and voice that opinion. The time has passed where you exchange business cards say a big hello to adding a potential business partner to your friend list and do business online rather than a boring conference call. Its prompt , its efficient and it serves the purpose. However if used excessively this could lead to an addiction. Addiction to online communities could have an immense effect on our self esteem. Little things like not having any new posts on your wall for a few hours could leave person feeling lonely and even believing that he does not have any friends. Even the term friendship has a new meaning , a person you could have just socialized with for a few minutes could be defined as a friend on your network group. People are more comfortable playing games like Scrabble online than doing the same thing face to face, this impairs the individuals social skills as he is more comfortable in shield of his computer screen that having to go with the process of actually communicating with people. Online forums can be a powerful productivity tool, but self-awareness and discipline are required to prevent them from becoming a pitfall of procrastination.

More and more, the Internet has become a scapegoat for today’s societal problems. What decay sociologists, psychologists, and anthropologists have noticed in the last half century shows us that we are a society in dire need of some form of freedom, some way to express ourselves without being cast out from one’s niches and comfort zones. Online Communities, which, without any argument, is a wonderful technological advance for business, plays a crucial role in the community of the world in the future, but in its initial state, it is still the subject of fear and misunderstanding for those who don’t use it very intensely. It is blamed for today’s problems, as television long has been, while everything it does is inherently good for human interaction. Yes, it can be abused and people can pull away from the real world, spending long hours alone while reading web pages and playing games or checking their profile ever hour to see whose written on it or made a comment on their photos. But why should this be a problem confined to Online Communities at large? Any hobby or interest can be misused and abused, and anyone can become addicted to anything. What interests you also has the possibility of consuming you if you have a personality prone towards that vulnerability. An online community is nothing but a mere tool for us to communicate with people on an international level , it makes us come in contact with like minded individuals just like us, people we would have never come across had it not been for the opportunities provided by these communities, that’s how we gain perspective from those of other backgrounds. In my opinion there must be a balance when using social forums, like every things else it could be used for both good and bad . We must recognize this and begin to look at ourselves and not at social networks of computers as the source of our society’s ills.

Let me just conclude by saying use social forums for what their meant to be used for which is social networking and yes a word of advice “don’t be a balti”