The Dark Side of Social Media

Social Media has undoubtedly contributed towards making the world a global village and has uncountable benefits. It makes it easier for us to stay connected with people with whom we cannot meet on a daily basis, and also provides a platform to people from all forms of backgrounds for sharing opinions and views on various global issues.

Having said that, let us look at the other side of this story. Although we do not realize it, but here is how social media has actually affected our life, and that too in not a very good manner.

1. Social Media today is making people more and more unsocial.

When I mentioned before how it helps us in stay connected with friends and relatives living in different parts of the world, what I did not mention was that it also causes us to drift apart from the people who are actually around us all the time. With people, and especially the ones belonging to this generation spending most of their times on Facebook and Twitter, there is hardly enough time for family gatherings and celebrations. Forget about that for a while and think how long was it since you went out last to meet your friends and play outdoor games.And even when you did, did you or did you not got yourself clicked so that you can post a picture on your various handles?

2. Social Media affects our communication skills.

Sounds surprising, doesn’t it. But yes, that remains a fact. While getting more and more used to talking and chatting on virtual platforms, we lose the communication skills in real life. For instance, do you not remember using shorthand abbreviations while writing official documents, or using casual words in a relatively formal setting. Well, that happens a lot because we usually tend to mix up the conversation in our mind, and the consequences at times do not turn out to be really good.

Not only that, it also dilutes the emotions involved in a conversation. With my news-feed full of words such as LOL and Haha all the time, I wonder at times if the person who posted them actually found things funny. Were they even smiling, let alone laughing while doing it. Or just the fact that the other person is not present physically, makes it unimportant to even feel an emotion while having a conversation with them?

3. Social media helps create an inferiority complex between people.

This one might not be true for everyone, but still remains to be a fact for most cases. Don’t get it how? Well, for an example, likes on Facebook and Instagram are usually associated to the popularity of a particular person. I know that it sounds stupid, but yet it is true. People who aren’t all that popular on these media handles usually take it the wrong way,assuming themselves not to be good enough or something.

Also, with even children as young as 11-12 having these accounts, they hardly have anything to do with them and end up comparing their lives with another person, which certainly is not a fair deal.

4. Frequent clash of opinions

Yet again,the biggest issue today is that with people being more and more vocal about their ideas, a disagreement between different opinions, peoples and groups is bound to happen. When the topic involved is a bit controversial, for example, religion or reservations, the difference in ideas, and the fact that everyone has the right to express it publicly can cause a lot of damage.

Therefore, although there is no doubt that social media has a lot of benefits, but like any other product, this too comes up with a lot of waste packaging.



Written by Avinash Srivastava
A Writer of Stories, Loves Novels and Movies