Social media is primarily thought of as a giant conglomerate that provides interaction services, communication platforms, and immeasurable information. But in reality, it is diametrically opposed to it. It is a dark devil who wears a masquerade to infiltrate and inculcate every single user to drive according to their aspiration with a force-feeding instrument. It is a part of everyday humdrum life for people–from children to adults to the elderly.
According to a study conducted by scientists in 2020, an average individual spends one-fourth of the time a day on social media–which is five hours a day. This has had adverse impacts on their health. Consistent eyeballing can breed perennial diseases like eye-watering, cataracts, uveitis, myopia, Alzheimer’s, and so forth. Social media is transboundary with no demarcation in the cosmopolitan evolutionary cycle. The bulk of users often gets entangled in the bifurcation of negative and positive connotations. This platform is over-exaggerating, overarching, and over-elaborating dictating the mass to be incensed instantaneously along with fleeting euphoria. The way it is headed towards its predatory nature is astoundingly horrendous. The users are submissively prone either by their own habitual obedience or intoxicated by the infodemic. The infodemic is constantly enslaving the mentality and the lifestyle where users are bombarded by several snippets of information, misinformation, and disinformation.
The users are falling prey to the world of social media. The powerhouse of the social media maneuver is capitalizing on it and profiting substantially. Apart from it, the users share memes, jokes, and sarcastic views which go viral in the digital world of friends’ circle. The majority of people are in the “echo- chamber” where they firmly believe that whatever the photos, videos, and texts they post and react to, others should also uphold the same conviction and beliefs to provide decisive validation. So they come to live in a “never-ending rabbit hole” which solely deals with the falsification of truth and reality for creating fear-mongering and rumor-mongering subjects.
People are spending more time in the digital world for social credit and revenue. As a result, infomedic is rapidly spreading. Besides, it is creating a hazardous atmosphere and making society ridden. Dale Carnegie in his book How to Enjoy Your Life and Your Job primarily states that when there comes any pot-boiling and intriguing subject then we expedite to invest our time, money, creativity, energy, 100 percent efficiency and so forth for the appealing outcome. In fact, the same thing is happening in this millennial time where users of social media are using it in a segue manner. Due to its undue use, there are humongous problems like sleep deprivation, mental anguish and loss of self-esteem. We spend maximum time in the digital world but minimal time in the real world.
Social media is like a “double-edged sword” that is making life lethargic at the same time creating the impression that it is a bed of roses. But the majority of people are psychologically devastated. We should adopt either medication or meditation as the permanent solution. Nevertheless, there is inadequate gracefulness, creativity, tenacity and energy which are the weapons of mankind. We should free ourselves from the chains of social media and understand its real predatory nature.
Diwakar Dhakal is a student of BALLB at Kathmandu School of Law.
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