This technology boom of 21st Century has made everyone a slave of modern gadgets. We are greatly dependent on them for all our daily chores; from controlling our food processing to conditioning our diet based on nutritional information. We depend on gadgets to wake up and expect to hear a sweet “Good Morning!”, not from our beloved, but from our AI machines. This is when, unknowing, we have made our life to be projected on a screen for the world by using Social Media. Even when we sneeze, it’s a selfie time today; time for a great photograph to post on Social Media. India is a country where we are witnessing sudden rise in the number of population getting in touch of the newer trends of Social Media. People have made it a fashion trend to have a Facebook account even when one hasn’t acquired the required thirteen years of age. Youngsters have made it a place where they can take up every possible issues they can think of. When Social Media has become that inevitable in our lives, it has led us to think of the wider aspects of Social Media. Definitely, Social Media is a two-edged knife.
Social Media – a name given to all such technologies, where people share their social life with their friends and virtual society – is not a new concept for us. Six Degrees, came up in 1980s, to be the first social media website where a person was able to upload their profiles and share thoughts and ventures with others, making virtual friends. This concept grew and now we have multiple Social Media sites competing against each other offering one of the best platform to be proud of.
Social Media has acquired glories by the possible potential of connecting the whole world into a single platform, where anyone can talk, share and make friends with anyone around any corner of the world. It has provided us with an opportunity to know the happenings around the world, even faster than what news channels bring to us. Besides, Social Media is not dependent over what a person thinks, is appropriate, to be shared to the world. It is where every person can use his power to express and share every single thing he wants to share. But, have we ever thought about how this adversely impacts on our lives? We see posts of a person we don’t even know or care about. This, in a way, is actually feeding garbage into our brains. What do we have to do, when a person went to a party of his friends marriage – two things, One, we get to know how the management came up, for our future organising plans, and second, we might come to know of a person who went to the party, even when he wanted it to be his personal endeavor. This is what Social Media brings – good and bad – hand-in-hand.
Besides, we now shift our focus on the brighter side of it. Now-a-days, professional bodies use Social Media to announce the upcoming of new ventures, thoughts, and products. As we see, it is the easiest and cheapest of the ways to reach millions of their users every single second. Government agencies have reached Social Media to make people aware of their rights, responsibilities and powers. Mass inclusion can be reached for a referendum, if the Govt. wants to know their citizens’ collective decision over an issue. It can thus guarantee inclusion of most of the people in a democracy entitled to be the largest in the world, like India. Decision making has, thus, been made easier by the use of Social Media. Speaking about decision making, we can easily visualize social media to be a community, where people can discuss the government’s policies as well and come up with suggestions for amendments to the policies. This helps in more of the people, in the same field, to interact for the welfare of our society. It can be noted that these platforms make it possible to have a wider discussion enhanced with multimedia, press and the concerned experts under a single shed.
Today, most of us have our smartphones. It is thus exciting when we get to know of our dear friends celebrating their birthday or going for a trekking etc. We, thus, become a part of it and share our joys together. Social Media is increasingly used today to share how and why of most of the aspects of our daily life. This enables us to know things better from a person that have mastered it. Remember, a vendor on the street selling delicious Masala Dosa. He can bring his inspiring mouth-watering techniques to the world with great ease on Social Media. Was it possible for him to share such things on a news channel for others to follow? No!
Social Media has made it possible to know about people all around the globe. We thus are able to know of different cultures, festivals, games and celebrations. This is the biggest of the boons that the Social Media brings. It has made our earth a Global Village – Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam – the teachings of our Holy book Gita. It has the power to spread the news in seconds, directly from the authority to the crowd. Government has thus taken it to Social Media to popularize its schemes to the country. People have also started using Social Media as a platform for mass movements. Actions against issues like corruption, have gained a moment through the Social Media. It had an inevitable role in India’s fight against corruption. Memes are the silent stories that are popular in establishing a connection of the current problems past episodes of movies, plays etc. Recently, Maharashtra Govt. had announced to allow outside food into theatres and Social Media was immediately flooded with memes. It’s not that people can make joke of anything now, but how they can easily share their opinion on every aspect of their life, be it exams, festivals, decisions etc.
Addictions can be bad enough to take away your precious life. In the history, we have witnessed many such cases where most of the people have unknowingly fallen prey of the marshy land of social media. This has thus, brought an inevitable death! We are therefore advised to be more psychologically sound than technologically, to be a safe social media user. All we have to do is to check every aspect of anything that passes under our nose. One’s safety on such a gigantic platform is only based on how he or she classifies the content, marking them public and private. Once we are smart enough to be choosy, we are a great surfer across the waves that surround the virtual world of social media.
Addiction to Social Media, not only degrades a person’s mental status, but the continued use of social media can also result in a person staying quarantined from the material world and engrossed into the virtual profiles looking for friends, relatives and acquaintances. This is a state, when the person is totally indulged into screens, pays no attention to surroundings, to people around, and to the mesmerising nature to end with. This can thus result in serious health issues related to brain, eyes etc. One can suffer from respiratory issues if he holds himself engrossed into social sites for long, deprived on fresh open air for a long time. Only then can one see, why people tend to develop marginalisation from the material society, when they get addicted to the social media. We may thus conclude that excess of everything is bad.
At large, companies have started working into making this virtual world, a safer place for us to live in. Facebook has made it a point to restrict the audience for any of our posts. Newer platforms like WhatsApp, are striving hard to make it a trustworthy place, bringing more of the content responsibility to the authorities managing groups and their members. It must therefore, be brought forward that one must ask for, or at least discuss about the reforms needed into such growing platforms.
All these strands merge into a thread to say that Social Media is the only weapon we can think of, to reach millions, the moment we blink our eye. And when we blink our eyes, it can definitely bring down heavens on us, if we go wrong. A tool that powerful, brings with itself lots of responsibility. Responsibility on the part of its organizers, to organise things in public interest with utmost care of every individual’s private and confidential sectors. Owning companies must also ensure a healthy environment in this virtual world to protect their renowned media. We must also accept the responsibility as a user, to take social media to the glories it deserves to shrink down this ever growing world into a single click. We must make sure not to depend on it for our lives. It is just a platform to share views in public interest, not our personal ventures. Truly said, Social Media – A two-edged knife!!!
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