Are you a ‘wise’ social media user?

-Sukanya Singh

The advent of social media has led a huge impact on the lives of people. It is a widely accepted form of media in the world today, because of its innumerable merits. It is seen that more than half of the population of the world spends most of their time with the social media platforms like – YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Whatsapp, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc. Social media not only connects people from different nook and corners of the world, it also aims in sharing information, education and entertainment instantly, without a delay. It is that form of media where every single person bearing an internet connection can exchange words, pictures, videos and what not? We are all familiar with this type of media much more than the traditional, print and the electronic ones such as – Street acts, puppetry shows, the newspapers, magazines, television, radio, etc. Now days we get to enjoy these forms of media in the social media itself. We use to get the online newspaper applications, magazine applications, news channel applications, maps, cooking channels, tutorial channels, vlogging, blogging, entertainment channels, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hotstar and many more. It can be said that the social media is the convergent form of all the media types in short.  This is a summary of the social media that we all are familiar with very transparently.

Some of the social media platforms...

Let us explore the other side of the story- 

People are seen misusing the social media handles a lot in today’s world. The aim from sharing information, education and healthy entertainment shifted almost to the aim to provide misleading information, to provoke and to troll people most of the time for some. If some hacks the account, some on the other hand spoofs, some does phishing and then some misguide the general audience with faulty knowledge and also steals important data or information from them. This may be due to many reasons – To increase TRP, easy money, to gain credibility, to defame someone, etc. Again, it is seen that some section of people always try to trigger others towards communalism via sarcastic posts, which end up resulting communal clashes among people of different religion or community. Some people are seen posting more of ‘their stories’ than the stories of their surroundings which need much attention; getting likes or comments or shares on their stories has become a trend and they are really concerned about that only, leaving other important aspects of the society, most of the time.

The new trend of the social media users...

Society needs information. But, when people are provided with false statements, such messages gets wired into their brain and people start behaving , thinking, and taking decisions accordingly. This is a threat to all of us. We, as a responsible citizen of the Nation, should know how to stand against the wrong doers. If we see something bad and vulnerable, we should take a stand and raise our voice to make others understand the real scenario other than just to sit, watch, listen to the fake events, happenings or people and accept it. In this way we can stop the culprits from disseminating rumours and misleading information and can generate more number of developments in the country and take it forward with pride.

Join hands to stand with the truth not with the fake...