Off late, whenever I surf through my social media accounts, I tend to feel a sense of burden on my mind within a few minutes.
Reason-too many opinions by people as if they all fear being left out if they won’t speak out on social media.
Earlier, we had to push people to speak out, give opinions, and break the spiral of silence, now every other person seems to have an opinion on every other thing.
I see a barrage of posts on social media from my corporate friends who were known to sit comfortably in their air-conditioned rooms, instant multiple Twitter handles created for an event while confusing the users which one must be used, while the ‘WhataApp university’ works 24*7.
The overproduction and overconsumption of information bring along the problem of misinformation, lies, fake news being spread across social media which have sometimes led to incidents of lynching, social boycotting, harassment to name a few of the repercussions.
To plug these issues few companies have developed their own fact-checking mechanisms but the damage is done as soon a single fake message gets distributed. The social media detox messages are yet another way to stay glued in.
Being social on these platforms end up keeping us away from actual social life and make us ambiverts. It also robs our power of listening as each one of us try to save our voices from being drowned out.