Untitled

Social Anxiety Warning! Do We Live In A Society Where Real Human Contact Is A Thing Of The Past?

 

Let’s face it, the days of cocktail parties and schmoozing with real people is quickly coming to an end. Whenever people today are faced with the real possibility of talking to other humans, anxiety sets in.

 

Social anxiety is a rising epidemic not only in our American society, but also in many places around the world. I was reading the Chinadaily.com today and found something interesting.

 

Liu Ce, in here article about social anxiety disorder among people in China explains what many people all around the world are feeling these days.

 

 

Liu Xianghang chats up a storm online, but when it comes to real people, she has a fear of communicating. “Talking with others in the real world always makes me blush and my heart beats quickly. I never dare to look in anyone’s eyes when speaking,”

 

the 22-year-old said, describing her anxiety. “But I become quite a different person on the Internet. I can chat with anyone and say anything I like, which makes me very popular among netizens,” Liu added.

 

I think this is a pretty normal thought process these days. We can all hide behind a computer and be anyone that we want. Nobody will judge us, and even if they do…who cares! They are not judging the “real” us anyway, so we never have to worry about feeling unwanted or awkward.

Liu has the classic symptoms of social anxiety disorder, Wang Xumei, a psychologist at Shengjing Hospital of China Medical University, told China Daily. According to Wang, the number of social phobia patients he is seeing is nearly 50 percent more than in each of the past 10 years.

China News Week reported in 2011 that social anxiety has been rising in China, with 10 percent of people experiencing distress in social communication.

What is it about this generation, and these times that is making people feel like they need to hide at home? It could be nothing more complicated than that is just the world we live in.

In the “olden days” it didn’t matter if you were awkward or not. It didn’t matter if you had anxiety of any kind. You had to live your life and get through it somehow.

People didn’t work on computers from home, and people certainly didn’t “socialize” with others over computerized communication channels. We had to actually socialize in person, and I think it made society a lot better off.

According to the Social Phobia/Social Anxiety Association, a non-profit organization in the United States, about 7 percent of the world’s population has some form of social anxiety disorder. Liu, a senior at Northeastern University, is looking for job, but her social phobia has led to many rejections.

For several years, her spare time has been spent online. If she’s not near a computer, she readse-books [sic] on her mobile phone, rather than chatting with classmates or even friends. “I don’t know what to say to them. I feel relaxed on the Internet. We don’t know each other online,so I feel free to talk about anything.”

Liu saw a psychologist at her school, but that didn’t help. She even bought books on conversational skills. “Useless. I’ve read them all and still don’t know how to start a conversation.” “It’s caused by a sense of inferiority,” said Wang.

Isn’t is astounding, outstanding and almost unbelievable that the world is so anxious all the time. Anxiety has always been a part of human life. It is what makes us human, and to an extent it helps us to evolve into better people.

If we are going to flourish though, it is going to have to change though. We, as a society need to put these computers and smartphones down for 5 minutes and go outside! We need to have parties, and do things with other human beings.

I don’t see these social anxiety issues getting any better with time, and if we wait too long it may be too late.

via anxietyreliefzone.com