Social Media – The DARK SIDE

Social Media has drastically changed the behaviour & lifestyle of the people

According to an annual internet growth report released by global media agency “We Are Social”, last year till January there were approx. 2.31 billion active social media users worldwide; interestingly, which was 31% of the global population & was growing at an annual rate of 10%. The outcome of another study underlines that a user spends approx. 118 minutes on average per day on social media. As per the study, the urge for “being social” has found extreme among the age groups of 16-35.

Not just the time consumption, social media has drastically changed the behavior & life style of the people. From group picture to “selfies” & from talking to “commenting”, social media has created a world of its own terminologies & etiquettes. The behavioral shift has triggered a sense of uneasiness among the people. Recently, when Facebook went down for few seconds, it crippled down the lives of its large user base including the brands

Similarly, this is how a Twitter user reacted when Twitter app was restored post a brief outage

Reactions of Snapchat users for their darling app was even more intense

Outage of social networking channels has given tough time to authorities to manage the public chaos. See the below announcements by official handles to console people

This social impact has not even spared the economic institutions. In 2013, fake tweet from the official handle of news agency Associated Press (AP) wiped $136 billion from the US stock market S&P 500 index in about two minutes

The extent of social penetration on the lives of people can be imagined by a finding where last year in US, more than one third of divorce fillings contained the word “Facebook”.

Not just ‘person 2 person’ conflict but the intensity of social media can cause disaster in a big way; recently a fake article on social media sparked a nuclear war threat between Pakistan & Israel.

“Selfie” the term named by Oxford Dictionaries as word of 2013 is another element of social media behavior. In 2016, US Presidential election when democratic candidate Hiliary Clinton went for a public address instead of looking & listening to her the entire crowd humorously turned to click selfie with her.

Even adventurous attempts to click selfies have cost lives of many people. From 2014 to August 2016; there have been at least 54 deaths in India alone while clicking “out of the box” selfies

Use of social media is also among the prime reasons for road accidents. Some developed countries has introduced ground level traffic lights to prevent its “down looking” mobile users from mishaps

With the increase in penetration of internet day by day, the world is turning out to be a big WiFi zone where people live in a virtual world. Now days WiFi is available in bars, restaurants, trains, airports, supermarkets. There’s even WiFi on Mount Everest

To give people a break from WiFi , chocolate brand “KitKat” did a marketing campaign named “No WiFi Zone” by blocking internet signals within 5 km radius of the ad installation so that people can go offline & sit talking to other people , reading hard copy books

According to a report published by the Telegraph in the year 2015, excessive use of social media by children risk delays in their emotional and social development because of the more time spent in the virtual world further causing mental illness to them.

The corrective measures against this menace have also started, in US  many volunteer groups have been creating awareness through “Detox” initiatives to help people get rid of the killing habit of “always on social” thus pushing popular networks like Facebook , Twitter, Snapchat to eye other countries like India & China to create sticky user base.

With the above instances, it is clear that in the name of “connecting the world”, social media on one side has dis-connected people from the real world. Remain informative is always fine but should not be at the cost of life.

Here are few signs to observe & decide whether you also need “Social Detoxification”

• Depression

• Loneliness

• Conflicting Views

• Limited communication with Family & friends

• Explicit behavior on social media