Social media is one of the great influences and opinion makers of our times. Technology has brought us closer with its innumerable innovations getting “smarter” by the day.
Social media websites are flourishing with millions of users and every piece of information is available a “tweet an instant” or “a Google” away.
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This has a tremendous impact on the young of today who are the future of our tomorrow. With the search engines of the internet falling over each other, working overtime, you get what you desire, whether it is information, entertainment, art or even serious research. Such a wonderful shortcut to life!
However with all its conveniences, social media has killed the one thing that makes a human being “human” and different from the other orders of creation which is originality, a sense of curiosity that sends a youngster running on a rewarding quest.
The quest for knowledge is a long journey that makes a student and a learner to delve into worlds unknown and come up with knowledge acquired with ones soulful efforts and love of the inquisitive and wonderful in this world.
When all information and knowledge is there at your command with the click of a mouse where is the urge for intellectual effort and where is the space for genius? We all say the same things, and do the same things, all of us conform not so much for our own happiness but for social approbation.
There is no new thought for when everybody thinks alike it can be safely assumed nobody thinks. It is not uncommon to see a roomful of youngsters in total silence lost in their mobile phones of different avatars.
There appears to be no inclination for communication or conversation or exchange of views. Unfortunately all that is available on the internet for their consumption. The outdoors too no longer beckons either with physical games or for indulging their animal spirits.
Matters of course have been complicated by the pandemic. Driven more and more into isolation by nature and technology, we are more confused than ever.
As social media takes its giant strides with more inventions and its tentacles reach out to us, we are lost as human beings with our loss of selfhood, empathy imagination and humanity.
One of the things that worries the modern man is artificial intelligence where all work, all thought, even emotions are left to the robots. Except for the highly intelligent, the mediocre and the ordinary who could have improved themselves with commitment and knowledge are rendered redundant.
Social media gives us no time to hone our skills, to explore our strengths and innate desires to combat the threats of the future. We must be up and about in the race not knowing the goal.
There is no doubt that social media has its virtues with movements and revolutions in the cause of the just and its faster solutions for easing the lives of many in different spheres.
It is left to the individuals and their teachers and preceptors to wean them away from the evil effects of the social media, to sift the good from the bad, to differentiate the fake from the authentic. Let us claim ourselves before the social media completely claims us.
