Youngsters of today are very popular on social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Instagram etc. These handles provide the youth with an opportunity to keep contact with their alumni network, post latest updates about their life, connect with friends from remote places, post pictures and so on.
Earlier, people used to communicate with friends over letters and later through e-mails and chats. Now this has been made easy through social media where every second of a person’s life can be updated on an easy platform.
A broader perspective of the social media
Be it Facebook or twitter or any other social platform, they purely work on the policy that ‘people are more interested in others’ lives than their own’. In other words, people almost always are very curious to know what is happening in their friends’ circles, their acquaintances and known circles and want to stay updated and find this a good way to network.
Suppose you had a high school friend who got disconnected with you after school days, you probably thought of an opportunity to re-connect with that friend again. Earlier, you had to accomplish this task either by searching for his/her phone number and then calling them up or exchanging letters with them.
An updated version of this communication was exchanging mails, which was also, to a certain extent took some time for the communication to happen both ways. Then came instant chats and messengers to ease our communication tasks.
With social media platforms at the fore, we no longer need to stay glued to e-mails to look forward to any kind of communication from our friends. One message from a friend and it will be broadcasted to all his friends connected with his profile and everybody in that loop will know the latest updates of his life.
That is, social media platforms basically use the broadcast technology to pop a single message to a network of relevant members, who the sender wishes to share his message with.
Shortcomings of social media
Ask any kindergarten student about Facebook and he is sure to educate you about the current profile picture that his parents have and what statuses they have in their current state. Such is the popularity of social media handles that people spend a majority of time in front of them, not thinking whether it is necessary or not, whether it is relevant to them or not.
Earlier, people used to spend a lot of time reading books of their interest. This was partly taken over by the internet rage, when people discovered that they could get information about almost everything under the sun, when they did a mere search on internet.
Now with active social media platforms taking over our lives, people are so glued to these channels that personal lives are taking a sure backseat. This is where social media plays a selfish role, in that the individual forgets that it is only a small part of his life and he cannot put his whole life on showcase over these channels.
Be it a holiday with our family, a festival at home or something as simple as buying a new dress, the first thing that comes on people’s minds is to promote it on their respective social media account.
Not just that, people form groups with their like minded friends and talk about various topics. In other words, it becomes a medium of expression to voice your opinions about a currently happening debate or a current topic in the country that is of rage with the youth.
Why social media plays the selfish part is, people talk to any extent on these platforms without thinking of the consequences. It’s good to express our opinions but stretching beyond boundaries is a bad thing, a selfish thing.
When things go out of hand, people face dire consequences, could lead to arrests etc. This kind of promotion being initiated on these social media platforms and later provoking people to speak blindly causes many problems in people’s lives.
Selfish that it may look for these platforms, they fail to an extent where the personal life of the individual sometimes takes a backseat.
Multidimensional ‘selfish’ faces of social media
Taking selfies is the most happening thing of today. There are people who dress up every morning just to take a selfie and replace it with their earlier photograph on their respective accounts. Isn’t this a sort of forced behavior that these social media handles are creating? It may further lead to obsession and may cause disturbances in the normal functioning of the individual as well.
There have been many selfie deaths reported from various parts of the world. People, in a hurry to show the world that they are up to something, forget to see the bigger picture and restrict their minds towards these media.
A new thing that has surfaced over recent times is the increasing thefts that are happening in various pockets of the world due to Facebook promotions. When a person showcases himself to the public on his Facebook account when on a vacation with his family, he is indirectly sending out a message that the house is empty and can be explored by those waiting to carry out such tasks.
On similar lines, many thefts and burglaries have been reported from around the world and we ought to be careful the next time we think of posting a beautiful picture of our family on a spring vacation.
Women exploitation is a common thing heard of everywhere. Cyber crime is difficult to be handled, yet these social media platforms to a great extent are indirectly promoting the occurrence of many such incidents.
There have been so many cases where photos and pictures of beautiful and popular women are picked up from these social media accounts and later distorted or used for unethical purposes. This amounts to false defamation of the individual involved and attracts legal penalties from the Cyber world.
Precautions please!
Social media handles are not bad. They are only doing their business, but in a more attractive and prospective way as they please. It is left to us to exercise caution when we publicly post our pictures or send out sensitive messages on these handles.
There could be a possibility of misuse of data from these social media platforms. Security policies in place in these handles could be exploited by wrong doers at any moment and we may become victims of these kinds of cyber crimes.
Conclusion
Every new platform, be it on social media or any other useful venture has its own advantages and disadvantages. Social media platforms definitely play a great role in staying connected and networking with like minded groups and individuals, but have many shortcomings too.
On the flip side of the coin, these media can actually act as selfish platforms that grab required data from individual accounts and use it as per their greed or unsolicited requirements. Much is done to curb the misuse of data by enforcing strict Cyber laws in place, but violations happen everywhere.
It is for us to enlighten ourselves about these shortcomings and not become unnecessarily addicted to them. They should be a part of our lives, but we shouldn’t allow them to take over our lives itself.
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