Skip to main content

Social Media: Something that boosts you or something that pulls you down?

Social Media! Woof! Well, where do I start from? Be it Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Linked In, Viber or even Whatsapp there are endless applications that are available today! And of course with the availability of high storage capacity memory cards one can afford to have them all in their phone; except yes, for the poor iPhone users like me, who may afford it only after making or buying some space in their cloud storage. In either case, with social media we have an enormous connectivity with our ‘loved’ or even the ‘not so loved one’ these days. Where probably walking out of a relationship was rather simpler in the olden days, where a tear was shed, and a number was blocked, now the same takes hell lot of efforts due to the same enormous connectivity.  For instance, while you may be just trying to forget your ex and may have removed him from your facebook and twitter, he may appear on Instagram all of a sudden because of some mutual followers. Well, delete, delete, delete is all that you can do till of course no more new applications are launched! And why just new applications, your own facebook may at times add some salt to your healing wounds, with the constant reminders of your post which may have been a year, or even six years back! Man! Only if the technology knew what to remind and what not to remind we would have been better I guess!
Well, relationships and exes are one aspect of it, but how about a daily basis social media for an otherwise peaceful soul! “Tring” rings our alarm in the morning, and beneath the snooze and stop button, we see some tempting notifications flooded on our screens as soon as our eyes open! With the usual press the snooze and sleep again, or press the stop and wake-up; we end up beginning our day opening the exciting notifications or WhatsApp messages. Even before your poor brain comes back in coordination, and your poor lungs get some fresh air, you are drowned in others lives! You open your facebook or Instagram for instance and someone has checked-in to some airport to fly abroad “Ohh! This fella! He barely did anything in school and he has checked-in for Venice. Look at me, I am slogging hereL”, you scroll down and there goes another post, “What!! Even she has a baby; here I am, still single and sad.” Wow! Where an otherwise you may have got up fresh, may be exercised and thought about the positives of your life, your day itself begins by such silly comparisons. From what to do next, perhaps our lives have come to a state where we think, what to post next all the time! When even on a holiday I bet we see less around us, and more on our phones to make sure that we have captured the right pose and right background for more likes and more comments! Be it any social media app or even the WhatsApp we want notifications to keep ourselves busy at all times, which eventually is taking a toll on what we can actually do with ourselves, our lives, and with our surroundings.
Of course, it's not all negative, there are positives too, social media is an excellent platform for advertising your work, for staying connected with people in a healthy way, for reaching out to people you may have otherwise just dreamt of, not to forget even the big shots can be reached on Twitter. It’s actually good to be on all possible applications as long as you know, that at the end of the day it’s your work that will eventually make you successful and not your notifications. As long as you realize that if you are busy with your phone the entire day, you are still free doing nothing! And as long you do not compare your lives and your potentials with the posts on your screens.


Social media: Well it can be something that may boost you tremendously or something which may pull you down as well! It all depends on how you end up using this double-edged sword!  

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Veggies/Non-veggies! We choose or we follow!

Bored with my daily routine, and it being a Sunday I planned to go out to shop a little last week! On my way I stopped the auto fella to have a look at the plant nursery to see if I can get something to put in my terrace area. I was over whelmed by the way people were engrossed looking after plants there, someone was spraying water over the leaves while someone was mixing the manure with some insecticides, looking around I was about to step on a tiny sapling when one vendor interrupted me and said “Madam watch out, it will die” “Oops Sorry” I said and stepped aside. I was tempted to take some saplings for my home I sat there for some half an hour where I asked them about the different saplings they had and took three of them. After which I took some instructions on how I should nurture them, how many times to water, how much sunlight is needed etc so that they can grow the best. Within that very short span itself I felt the plants are alive! They need to be taken care of, they need t...

What's in a name?

  You maybe surprised to know that I have named my own self! Not because I didn’t like what my parents named me, but I accidentally uttered Vandita when the principal of the school where I was getting my admission done asked my name. Ever since I have known this, I used to wonder if my life would have been any different if I was rather called Nalini which was the name that was originally given to me by my parents. I have asked myself bizarre questions like, would I have had a different fate? Would I have bonded with different people? And so on and so forth. It was only with passing years that I realized that the only difference that it could have made in my life technically, would have been the position in which I appeared for my regular vivas during exams. My life in general would have been the same otherwise. It wasn’t until recently but, that I had to question the importance of a name in one’s life all over again after I starting calling my son by a not so unique or a rather co...

We need to choose our heroes more wisely.

  I have been thinking of writing this article for the past many weeks, ever since I saw a 16–17-year-old girl who makes Instagram reels in her local language and has gained many followers on that platform, interviewed by the head editor of a newspaper in his office. Does making funny reels, or having followers on social media make us so important, that we get to sit in an editor’s room for an interview? I thought first. If this girl is been made the hero for what she is doing now, how will she sustain to be a hero in the future, is what I thought second? And, does being a hero just need you to sit at home, and post? That is what I thought third. Our society stands on some deep foundations that have been laid down over a long period of years. It has been with the struggle and work of the great things done in the past that we have been able to reach where we are today. Be it technology or medicine, be it literature or art, the roots of all of these have evolved with years of learn...