Is Digital Detoxing Requirement of Time
Today digital Detoxing is becoming a requirement for people, it helps them to open their minds, reduce their burdens and feel free. We, humans, are social animals who like to connect and communicate with as many as people they can to create a social circle, another reason for this is that the thought of being outcasted from society gives us ghost bumps. It gave them the chance to connect and expand the boundary of knowledge & understand human emotions more effectively.
The revolution in technology changed all our old ways of meeting friends, finding love, and doing business. Social Media is a big cake with different variety of flavors, sometimes that flavor tastes good, and sometimes it’s bad for our pallets. Today we are very busy but whatever spare time we have with us, we spend it talking with the person sitting in another country, city or continent and not with the loved ones who sat next to us. Let’s see how social media knock on our door:-
1. When social media come into existence: – The history of social media is very interesting on May 24, 2017, an article was published in “The Washington Post” with the name “Before Twitter and Facebook, there was Morse Code: Remembering social media true invention.” It’s true before social media came into existence countries used the Morse Code to send messages, especially during the time of war. As the technology advanced many online communication services such as CompuServe, America Online, Orkut and Prodigy, etc. came into existence which gave us the opportunity of having real-time online chatting with any person around the world.
Facebook was launched in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and by 2008 it becomes the most popular social media platform and had more than 2.4 billion users around the world, On October 28, 2021, it changed its name to Meta. Instagram was launched in 2010 by Kevin Systrom as a photo-sharing site and was purchased by Facebook in 2012; it has more than 1 billion users worldwide. Like Instagram, and Facebook there are other platforms like Reddit (2005), Twitter (2006), Pinterest (2010), Snapchat (2011), and TikTok (2016). These entire social media platforms changed our life, both positively & negatively.
2. The Social Media Effect on Kids – Now a day’s kids are busier than adults and whatever free time has with these techno kids they spend online as a result they have no physical activity. Social media attracted the kids more than the adults as the result they missed out what is real-time interaction they don’t know how to make real-time friends & talk with them and the pandemic make this situation even worse. The kids are become addicted to the online games like PUBG & some children in innocence spend the real money of their parents to buy game accessories, which was not good neither for the parents or kids. Social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Takatak, Moj, Josh, Rizzle, and Snapchat, etc. not only gifted kids fame and money but also depression, anxiety, body-shame & cyberbullying. When the government banned TikTok out of depression, many TikTok stars committed suicide.
The Pew Research Center’s 2018 survey of U.S. teens determined that one in six teenagers have experienced at least one of six different forms of abusive behavior online: Name-calling (42%), spreading false rumors (32%), receiving unsolicited explicit images (25%), having their activities and whereabouts tracked by someone other than a parent (21%), Someone makes physical threats (16%), having explicit images of them shared without their consent (7%). The ragging and bullying had been banned by the government in schools & colleges, but to end this online is a long way to go.
3. The Social Media Effect on Mental Health: – The effect of social media on our mental health is very contradictory as it is good to kill the time but its excessive use has a bad effect on our mental health. Social media create a bubble of false life in which everything is more than perfect as a result definition of perfection changed. This changed definition of perfect life created the problems like body shame, depression, anxiety, memory loss, fear of missing out, low self estimate, and other mental health problems.
A 2019 study suggested that teenagers who use social media for more than three hours daily are more likely to experience mental health problems such as anxiety, depression, aggression, and anti-social behavior. But another study conducted in 2018 shows that it decreases loneliness among people and improved their mental health. But the truth is that our mental health is depending on how wisely we used social media.
4. Social Media and body shame- The media industries from the beginning portray the unrealistic image of the female body & now social media takes it to a different level. Many actors posted their photos of toned bodies or workout sessions to connect with the fans & also tried to inspire & encourage them to lead a healthy life. But we started seeing all these things from the wrong points of view and made the slimed and toned body as the criteria for good looks. Our body is the temple which has different shapes like slim, curvy, and chubby but from the perspective of social media slim and toned body is a blessing and other body shapes are cursed.
The perspective of this type affects the mental health of both adults and kids. We humans these days become so heartless that we don’t think even once when we troll another person for not having the perfect body shape and hurt their sentiments. Some people handle this sensitive matter effectively and give the trolls the befitted answer but some people who isn’t able to handle this matter sometime even committed suicide. Even ardent Trump in his public life has expressed disdain for women solely based on their physical appearances and their looks. Many actors, models like Gigi Hadid, Demi Lovato, Selena Gomez, Jennifer Aniston, Adele, Billie Eilish, and Charlie Puth faced this but they gave trolls the befitted answer and shut their mouths.
5. The Social Media Role in Politics: – In the old times the political parties during the time of election used newspapers, pamphlets, Banners, radio shows, and rallies to convey their message to the very costly masses. But today social media is cost-efficient and make this process easy for the political parties and big political parties have their own IT cells which handle their social media accounts. The political parties found it easy to convey the messages like their party agenda, achievements, and information about the coming events. But social media was very dangerous when Fake News stories are created on it to deliberately misinform or disinformation and deceive the voter. These stories are created to influence the voter’s views, push a political agenda, cause confusion or manipulate perceptions.
During the Lok Sabha 2019 general elections, the Election Commission has developed a set of ‘Voluntary Code of Ethics’ to ensure free, fair, and ethical use of social media platforms and to maintain the integrity of the electoral process. The 2016 US presidential election is the best example to see how social media affect the election before and after the election. As per separate investigation conducted to find the interference of Russia in the US presidential election and concluded with the observation that Russian intelligence agencies created fake social media accounts to influence the election in favor of the eventual winner Donald Trump. The former President was banned from Facebook and Twitter after his supporters stormed the US Capitol so he announced a plan to launch a new social media network, called TRUTH SOCIAL.
6. The Social Media Role in Business: – Earlier to promote business we depend on TV Advertisements, Pamphlets, Radio Jingles, News Paper advertisements & big hoarding which are quite expensive and not everyone is able to afford them. Slowly use of the internet increased but with the coming of smartphones now the internet is in everybody’s hands. Social media platforms like Facebook, and Instagram started the features of advertisement to earn money, this become a good opportunity for the business to advertise their products and services on social media platforms to earn money. However, published advertisement on social media platforms is more cost-efficient than on TV and in newspapers. The social media platform helps many small business hubs in growth when used effectively. Many products are not available in the market, but only on online shopping portals or product websites. The growths of these types of products are possible only with the help of social media.
7. The Social Media Role in Culture – As technology advances with the help of social media, we are now connected with people around the globe. As the result, we came across people of different cultures, and it leads to the growth of cross cultures and helps us in our personal growth also. But it has some bad effects also as some mischief people posted some unethical things which have a very bad effect on our culture.
8. Social Media and Privacy- Social media users’ concerns about their privacy have spiked in recent years. To use any App we need to sign up on that portal only after filling in the personal information as a result the incidents of data breaches increase and have alarmed many users and forced them to rethink their relationships with social media and the security of their personal information. When personal information falls into the wrong hands, the consequences can be damaging.
According to the Pew Trust, 1% of Americans have had their social media accounts taken over by an unauthorized user. Such hacks can result in stolen information and forced shares that redirect followers to malware, among other things. The dramatic story of the consulting agency Cambridge Analytical is a case in this point. The firm exploited the private information of over 50 million Facebook users to influence the 2016 American presidential election. This example and others have steadily deteriorated public trust and made many users wonder if they have lost control over their privacy.
According to a study conducted by the Pew Trust, 80 percent of social media users report being concerned about businesses and advertisers accessing and using their social media posts. There are various types of social media threats like Data Mining whenever we sign for a website stored it stored the data in the company server and they used it for better target advertising to their users. Another thread is Phishing Attempts this is often in the form of an email, a text message, or phone call and tricks them into sharing sensitive data, including passwords, banking information, or credit card details. In August 2019, a massive phishing campaign targeted Instagram users by posing as a two-factor authentication system, prompting users to log in to a false Instagram page.
9. The Social Media Role in Protest: – From the essential commodities amendment bill 2020 Protest in India to the protest of the extradition Bill in Hong Kong or the storming of the US Capitol was a riot that was fuelled by misinformation that spread in an echo-chamber of perceived injustice against Trump with the social media (Facebook, YouTube & Twitter) plays an important role. The protest is now not bound by geographical boundaries for example Social media’s visual culture means that evidence of injustice can be communicated widely and quickly, which holds those responsible accountable for their actions. For example, George Floyd’s murder in May 2020 was filmed and sparked international Black Lives Matter protests. However old times when people protest against any injustice most of the time it remain confined to particulate groups until the matter is of social importance.
The participation of the people is very slow as most of them are not aware of When, Where & Why the protest is going on. But now with the help of social media, it becomes easy for people to inform and explain the message to a large number of people to protest again injustice. Social media was first used as a tool of activism during the 2011 Arab Spring, which became nicknamed the ‘Facebook Revolution’ and the ‘Twitter Uprising’. Since then, social media has been used by activists, protestors, and revolutionaries to attract global support for fights against a range of injustices. During the time of the COVID 19, pandemic social media become useful to provide essential to the people in need. Social Media has now become the battlefield for the protest but also the source of spreading wrong information & misconceptions.
No doubt that social media attached the people around the world, but at the same time it detached us from the person sitting by our side. Today no political movement or protest denies that social media is the power, but when this power is used in the wrong way it becomes harmful to us. We spend hours and hours of our life on social doing doom-scrolling or doom surfing, this not only affects our mental but also physical health. No doubt social media is a source of fame, money, and economic source for advertising the products from a business perspective. But looking after our mental and physical health is also essential, till now no method has been developed that filtered out the toxic content from the online platform. To protect ourselves from this is possible only by social media detox or by limiting our time online, it not only helps us to clear our minds but also helps to connect with the people near to us.
Posted & Written By hk
