Opinion- Social Media a source of relaxation or a great addiction?

 

Social Media started as a place where people could connect in a virtual space and stay updated about each other’s life. I joined Facebook in 2011 and it was fun back then. Contrary to how it was supposed to work, we used to talk in school about finding a time to come online and chat. The funny part was we spent the whole day together in school, and there wasn’t anything to talk about or catch up to. But we all would still be logged in and online at the same time to talk about some random things.

Coming from that point to the current situation today, where a lot of my and the younger generations do stuff just to put it up on the social media. I guess if I take away the ability to click pictures and upload stories on social media, a lot of us will go mad.  I would quote comedian Vir Das here who said “Is this a platform where we document moments of our life or our entire life is moments that are documented on this platform?” You got to think about it and answer it for yourself.

The current state can be credited to the way our devices, especially mobile phones work. The notification sound has been designed in a way that diverts our minds to check out notifications and engage in the required activity. We subconsciously go to random social media applications and scroll. The scroll is, if you ask me, a disease. The algorithm beautifully keeps us glued to it. This had led to a point where the average digital consumer in India spends about 2.4 hours on social media according to a survey in 2019 (The Hindu, 2019). This also grew rapidly after the cost per GB of data become very cheap in India.

Now the addiction developed over the years is not going anywhere. It was supposed to be limited, like a form of relaxation, where as it has become a form of addiction that we go upto whenever we find a break for ourselves. An addiction that wastes our time, our eyes and gives us nothing in exchange. The platform to share, create and express is good, until the mind is fully running for likes and comments. It has become a source of measuring self-worth, which is absolutely wrong. I don’t know how will this go away, but too much exposure has to be limited and one has to realise this for oneself.