Old black-n-white romantic flicks perfectly exemplify who and how’s of love and relationship in early 70’s and 80’s. Besides its basic emotional phenomenon, almost everything has been extensively changed. Meaning of Love redefined from generation to generation.

It’s an age of social networking where a huge crowd of people connect virtually with each other and just by few clicks a new friendship starts. Sharing photos, chatting, commenting and liking are some most commonly used activities on Facebook- the world’s largest social networking website.

Many operate social networking commercially or for social cause but still majority of its users are teenagers. Considerably, it is a Golden Phase of life and undoubtedly attraction to opposite gender is a natural occurrence in this age.

Today, social networking is an advanced and easy tool for a teenager to attract the opposite gender. Precisely, if we talk about smaller Indian cities like Udaipur which has strong cultural and social limitations and on the same time modernization is jumping in creating a discomfited fusion, how it’s effecting the thought of a teenager regarding love & affairs on social networking. After researching on more than 20 school and college going students (aged 16-21) of Udaipur, we’ve got some interesting facts.

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Almost 80% teenagers think that social networking is the best and easiest way to befriend a girl or a boy of same location. 19 out of 20 teenagers said that they met 2-5 friends first time after knowing them through facebook.com.

Sonam Mehrotra (name change), is a 21 years old Art student from Udaipur said that, yes it’s very difficult to involve in an affair being from a traditionally strong city like Udaipur but since the fashion of social networking came up it made things easier. The only relief social networking offers is that you can continuously chat with your partner and keep yourself updated with things going on his life.

Vaibhav Lodha (name changed) a 19 years old 1^st year B.Com student says that he is badly hooked with facebook, his day starts by login into and checking all updates. I have 6 girl friends on facebook, all from Udaipur and I met 2 of them in real, it’s very easy to find girls on facebook, just add them and start talking, after few talks they easily share their phone numbers and it goes on.

Though, according to our survey girls are more reserved than boys but boys have a different story to claim. Vikas Thakur (name changed) 19 years old says that I have friends who are more concerned about their own facebook profile pictures to attract girls. I’ve seen that girls are very choosy about their boyfriends, they accept friendship if you are good looking and have some real-time achievements, girls often show-off their boyfriends with other girls as a wealth.

Majority of boys look for a long term relationship and dream to marry a girl they love but girls opt for a short term relation as they know that they would not be allowed to marry someone of their own choice, so better go for a short term relationship, said Azam Khan 21 years old 2^nd year student from Udaipur.

18 years old Sunidhi (name changed) says, I never accept friend request on facebook from any stranger until he/she has mutual friends whom I know personally, still I get 5-6 friend request from boys every day. However, I would like to go for a date with a guy I met on facebook after talking to him regularly for a month or two. But, till now I never met anyone.

Meeting a guy via Social networking is still not preferred by girls until they met through a real mutual friends said 16 years old Naima Sayeed (name changed). I met few guys through facebook but through mutual friends, that also mostly my school mates.

Undeniably, social networking culture has changed the lifestyle of Udaipur’s young generation but at the same time it’s also creating a distressing situation for over concerned parents. Love is always respected and highly graded in India but sometimes it also deemed as a social taboo in many Indian societies.

From bollywood to internet, young India is effectively moving up and making their own decisions to define the meaning of freedom and technology.

Love is in air of social networks.

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A special thanks to Vaidehi Kachhawa and Siddhartha Gupta for their help with this survey.