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Accessibility, Fake News And Stress: The Many Shades Of Social Media

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Social Media is a master tool to connect with the world these days. One can easily find a huge number of frequently uploaded pictures of friends, families living far away from us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Chatting with known and unknown acquaintances is a remedy which social media has provided us. Also, it has made so easy to get the whereabouts of friends and families. We don’t get bored now, even in our free time, because of the platforms which bring additional people into our life each day.

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The social media platforms have become more powerful than every news channel nowadays because we can easily get the latest updates, be it genuine or bogus.
we can portray to a lie easily or false news as a genuine one on these platforms.

Advantages vs. Disadvantages

The greatness of this tool is that any voice can act as a stronger and be heard by many whereas the most exceedingly terrible aspect of this tool is that the unreliable news or any rumors heard by many sometimes lead to situations of riot, mobs on roads, destruction of public property, injuries to security providers and eventually to the common people.

Some political leaders sometimes use these platforms as a weapon to instigate common people and hide their shortcomings in their constituency by making everyone busy in day-to-day hatred and fights.

A wrong speech can lead to stone pelting, the army on roads, public property destruction which results into hospitals flooded with injured ones and finally communication blockade because of internet shutdowns to the region of which Jammu and Kashmir is the biggest example.

We have never seen such a long internet shutdown since independence which left the region to almost devoid of businesses, almost zero facility for food and other home deliveries in Kashmir.  Only a few in Jammu could access services, exams got affected and people were not able to check notifications for government jobs.

Working from home had become a dream for the people of Jammu and Kashmir. For more than six months people had not seen a triangular arrow of the internet on their mobile phones. Some other parts of the country were in the same boat where we saw internet shutdown recently.

Indispensability Of Social Media

The Internet has made our life a robot nowadays we can experience that mobile buttons are handling our lives nowadays. Sitting in the crowd and surfing on the phone, just the clicks of buttons have become common.

I have observed this during evening hours of my office, my love for tea made me go to the food court, settled on a chair with a cup of tea in front of me, I noticed that I had not given a single look to the cup I have trained my hands so good that they were picking the cup and taking it to my lips for a sip as I was busy with my other hand holding my mobile phone with both my eyes on it.

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There were no notifications,  yet I was continuously locking and unlocking the screen within a few minutes. Later I realized that I was not keen to get new notifications, but I had developed a regular habit of it. I checked Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and what not but could find nothing for me.

I closed my eyes and questioned if I am going through something? And when I opened my eyes and turned towards many people sitting nearby and noticed.
Some groups of friends sitting on tables but alone, because they all were busy with their mobile phones.

Making Sense Of Where We Are

The ambience of the food court was so silent that it was unbelievable to observe over 50 people were sitting for their tea breaks.

Imagine where have we landed up ourselves. Problems like stress, depression is because of this habit of continuously browsing the news feeds on these platforms.
We have bowed down in front of social media and made it the God of our lives. We can’t even remember when we did we exchange our energies with each other?

Being physically present with someone and sitting with our own mobile phones in our hands, mind and eyes busy with social media is not enough to share energies with each other.

In this era of stress and depression, we need to pause this habit of socializing over these platforms only and exchange our energies and thoughts with healthy discussions and hence know each other well.

Sometimes being a wonderful listener makes us learn so many outstanding things. They should not only read our writeups but listen to our voices too.
Raise your head up and click on the pause button to live some moments of this beautiful life.

It’s us only who rush to this life every day and then bow down in front of a media platform just to like or dislike the stories of others and then we think about the reason for sleepless nights and dry days.

Featured image is for representational purposes only.
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