How Social Media Destroyed Our Lifestyle
The rapid advancement of internet in general and social media in particular changed the lifestyle of our people in our digital age. It has both positive and negative effects on people, but youths are the most distracted who experience it. It lets people share information and have fun while it also slows down performance and the credibility of the people. We will briefly tell a little information about how social media affects our lives.
Social media has widely spread to the world for the past decade. People used to work, learn and share. Students went to schools and learned from their teachers and textbooks. If there was an exercise, students used textbooks or related papers. Radios and televisions were the main sources of news. Youths and children mostly play different kinds of sport or watch TV for entertainment or exercise. There were only conversations between members of the families and peer groups in which they told stories like tales, fiction and non-fiction. Also direct introduction or searching for the address of the person you love were the base of the courtship. The people utilized their time as they visited relatives, studied, and had fun together. Everything seemed straight forward before social media’s rise.
At the moment, almost everything has changed. People shop online though it is not something that everybody does. Students always look for information they need in the internet as they prefer it to textbooks. They don’t study their lessons for much time as they are busy using Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and others. It is very common to see small children who know how to use smartphones like viewing photos, playing games and watching through YouTube. 8-10-year-old children ask their parents to buy them smartphones. Most courtship starts in social media platforms from greeting, introduction and beyond. Current people, especially youths, watch dramas, films, songs, religious speeches on YouTube or in the Facebook. Physical exercise has also slowed down as social media makes everyone busy.
On the other hand, social media has negatively affected performance of current students. Though school authorities try to limit this problem, it is clear that current pupils are weaker than former ones. Social media has also made most youths sleep late around 12 or 1 a.m. as they chat with their friends and watch something. WhatsApp is one of the social media platforms that extremely affect youths. Someone is updating his/her status, then some friends reply and conversation starts from there. I asked many boys and girls between 15-25 what they do with social media. Most of them told me nothing more than having fun.
Social media’s negative effects on our youths can be mitigated. We have to use it in a right way. It does not mean never have fun, chat with friends or post pictures, but don’t spend much time on such things. Social media is a knowledge hub that one can learn from. It enables us to communicate with our families and friends who don’t stay with us. We should use it for better purposes.
Finally, social media has very positive effects on ourselves but there is a negative side as well. Let us teach our children and students how to use social media rightly, but we should not try to stop them from using it as they have a right to.
Hamza
