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Is Social Media Making You Social or Stressing You Out?
Remember the time when we, as kids, used all our playtime outside, talk with friends, enjoy the delicacies at neighbour aunty’s house? Playtime ended with the darkness of the day, and we played freely without any fear of safety with all the children in the colony (bhaiyas and didis!). If our mommies bought a new thing, it was immediately shared with friends around. Whenever she tried a new recipe, a full bowl reached our neighbour’s place. Our fathers also, even after coming back from a busy day at the office, tried spending time with other uncles and caught up over a cup of tea. So, there was a time when we were actually social.
Life these days has become very fast. Everyone is busy, struggling to keep ahead in this race, and hence, not able to devote much time for family, friends, neighbours, or our social circle. Social media has taken the position just at the right time. Since most of us are far from our families and friends, it sometimes helped to share and know about each other and brought people close. But gradually, it penetrated strongly in our life! We all started updating and sharing aggressively about our daily life and activities on Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram, etc.
When we cook something new or go to a restaurant, we are more focused on taking a perfect picture to update on social media first, and only after that do we taste the food ordered. We go for an outing, but instead of enjoying the place or the moment, we pose at our best to capture the most pictures for updating rather than making memories. The outfits we want to look cool in for a party, we flaunt it to update for social media. It’s not that I was not a part of all this, but at a point in life, it made me and maybe many others, realise that it’s better to enjoy that particular moment of life than to update. Yes, it is important to capture memories for reanimating them, but not to capture everything to update even to the extent of mapping them with false carried expressions.
Not only this but once updated, we are really caught into the circle. We check multiple times for comments, likes or views. It may keep us engaged, but it’s also true that it raises the stress levels because someone who was dear to us did not like or comment on our special post. Nowadays, it feels like people want to advertise more than to share their memories and experiences. They advertise their weddings, expensive buys, foreign trips, their achievements or everything or anything. But please remember that not everyone will be happy at your achievements or updates and that most of the comments appreciating or appraising you would be just ‘fake’.
Somewhere, it’s truly written that showing every good page of your life may attract an evil eye; you believe it or not, but it may sound true at some point in your life. So, its always good to keep a part of your life private. Also, it takes a toll on our productive time; our time which we would have actually spent with our family or friends, but we were busy scrolling down the social media pages! Every new platform, new apps, new technology is surely beneficial, but when we start creating an imbalance, it may ruin our life, our relationships, and our special moments. Keep updating, but bring a balance. Those people who are going deep into this, just try it once and you will feel the difference!