Recently a new app came out called Sarahah. I’m getting older as we all know, so it took me a few days to see it start appearing on social media and then I finally had to Google it to find out the hype of it all. I do not like the concept at all. I actually left positive feedback for one of my Facebook friends then I found myself thinking, “When this gets into the hands of kids and teens we’re all doomed.” These app creators do not see harm in things like this.
Sarahah was created for positive reasons, which, let’s face it, most apps hopefully are. The thing that makes this different though is the totally anonymity unless you are the one identifying yourself in the message itself by the first letter of your name or some other clever way which really defeats the whole anonymous thing. While anonymous positive feedback is a great thing, I think in person positive feedback is even cooler! Where else can you look someone in the eye and tell them that they look good today or that they have an awesome personality? In person, that’s where! We can seek positive reinforcement from strangers or not so much strangers on an app or we can receive that same feedback from people that can show a genuine interest in us as humans. Call me old fashioned, but I would much much rather be told something positive in person and identify and thank that person sincerely than to think in my head that I am thankful for what they said.
The whole concept then gets more shaky when you think about people that will not give positive feedback but that will use their words as knives. These people are the ones that scare me and even more are the people on the receiving end believing what they are being told even though it isn’t one bit true. The people that tell others to kill themselves or that they are worthless. I have wondered for ages why anyone would ever in a million years think that it is okay to tell someone to kill themselves. When I heard about the case of the girlfriend that kept asking her boyfriend when he was going to actually do it and call him a coward until he followed through, I really begin to wonder about the world we live it.
I don’t want to identify with a world where people are that crude and heartless towards one another. I want to identify with a world that lifts each other up when we are down and helps others to achieve the goals that they want to achieve. We can’t be built up by putting others down for sure. I know, I know, their brains aren’t fully formed until young adulthood, but I knew it wasn’t the human thing to tell someone that they should end their life.
I hope I’m wrong about this app. I hope it is used for all positive measures as it was intended. I’m just not as hopeful that I could be with the nature of the app where random people can leave feedback and do not even have to have the app. That is scary to me. The person on the receiving end may not be able to distinguish that they are a worthy person and that they matter no matter what the person wrote to them.
I couldn’t bring myself to download the app and I will not bring myself to download the app because I would much rather give compliments in real life. In fact, I am going to challenge myself and others to do something nice for someone each day and compliment someone to their face once a day. It may be easier some days more than others. It is building up others that we build ourselves up too. People feel good when they are appreciated. They have a better sense of worth; they feel like they belong to something greater.
Computers and phones in general allow us to put up a barrier. Most of the time this barrier has a negative impact on our daily lives. Even I find myself sitting beside my phone waiting for a message or scrolling through Facebook even though I did so about 4 minutes ago. I am sure that a lot had changed in that time span, haha. Sometimes we use the phone and texting as means to get out of things or to tell people how we really feel, let’s face it though, face to face interactions mean so much more from all aspects and they are to be more respected because of this. Often times a screen allows people to feel big and bad when really they are small and not so mighty in person.
The moral of the story I guess I am trying to convey is that we need to work hard to compliment others in real life and not through some app. Who knows when we will make someone’s day by a simple compliment? Let’s all try harder to compliment each other face to face when it really counts.