Face The Mirror – Not Just Facebook
How excited
were we to make our first Facebook account or install Whatsapp in our phones? When
I got on to Facebook I had no idea about how it worked. My friends and me were excited
about having an account on Facebook and spent a lot of time being online and
chatting to each other even if we didn’t have a sensible topic to talk about.
The same was with Whatsapp. When I go through my old chats on Facebook, it is
surprising that the number of people I chat with now are not even half the
number of people I used to talk to then. What bought this change in us? When I
look around today, most people from my generation are to some extent tired of pretending
to be someone they are not on social media. We really don’t know if it’s a boon
or a curse!
Nevertheless,
slowly I got exposed to Snapchat and Instagram. Snapchat is a medium to talk to
your friends through snaps, but it burdened us with the idea to look perfect
always. With Instagram taking a shot at our lives, we are all circled with hearts,
likes and followers. A person’s identity is being judged by the amount of
followers he has on Instagram and the amount of likes he gets on his pictures.
If someone is not active on Instagram or Snapchat, he is considered
“anti-social”. What an irony!
Are those
500 followers on Instagram or 1000 friends on Facebook really our friends? Can
we really count on them? If no, then what’s the point of all this? Wasn’t
social media supposed to bring us close? But who has the time for real talk?
Everyone is busy having earphones, scrolling through the feed and pressing
hearts on pictures of people we never met. The only hearts we actually give to
people are on Instagram and the only time we see our friends is on Snapchat. Maybe
a time will come when people will be given the capability to rank any person on
the basis of a star system and judge them on that basis. This has been shown
very well in Black Mirror’s- “Nosedive” episode.
Today we
are surrounded by applications such as Zomato and Swigg, because no one has the
time to cook at home or even sit with their families for a meal. Therefore,
such apps are taking over us. When was the last time we actually spoke to our
families about ourselves and asked them for solutions? Why would we, when we
have Google giving us solutions in a fraction of second! We trust Google more
than anything in this world, not even knowing if the information is true.
There is a
constant urge to post stories on Snapchat and Instagram, just to show people
that our life is equally happening as theirs. But the question is are we really
what we show on our social media accounts? Do we really smile like we do in the
pictures when we are alone? Only if we were able to share happiness and smiles
instead of sharing images, wouldn’t the world be a better place?
I wouldn’t
say that my experience with the social media has been bad. It has been really
helpful in connecting with old friends or for recreation. But as I reflect on
the happenings around us and the state of the youth, it does make me think on
how well I am leveraging it. Social media can be both a bane as well as a boon
depending on how you leverage it.
It is important to draw the line when it comes to using social media for merely passing time. Let us not allow technology to pull us away from the wonderful real people who surround us everyday and care for our well being everyday.
It’s time to look within – face the mirror, and come up with some real hard answers.
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