Social media Boon or Bane

The famous Greek philosopher Aristotle remarked more than 2,000 years ago that, “Man is a social animal”. Biologically and psychologically, he is compelled to live in society. However, in today’s world of increasing stress and workload, it is next to impossible to meet your friends and relatives every day.

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Social media is a digital technology that facilitates the sharing of text and multimedia through virtual networks and communities. Dropping a short text to your friend asking about their day or sharing your achievements are a few ways you can still maintain healthy contact with your near and dear ones. These platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram allow us to connect with our friends and family. And who can forget the immense role played by social media in keeping us mentally sane during the Covid lockdown.

These platforms have become the main source of providing information and news to a majority of population as they allow its users to post news links and other items. Just last month, I was listening to the a one-hour lecture on gene editing by Nobel prize winning scientists on YouTube. Who would have thought even two decades earlier that a young girl in India will have access to such educational content.

Just like every coin has two sides; just like for every Harry Potter there is a Voldemort; just like for every Gandhi or Mandela there is a Hitler or a Stalin; for every benefit of social media that I just mentioned, there are serious disadvantages that cannot be ignored. True, social media helps to connect family and friends; its equally true that over the years, it has turned us into its slave. Instead of talking with each other over the dinner table, family members are busy looking down into these rectangles. So instead of bringing us closer, social media has created walls among us where we prefer to connect with each other virtually rather than in real world.

To conclude, I wish to say that social media is tool with enormous potential that may be used by social beings like us for the betterment of the society or its destruction, the choice is ours.

Aanya Mahajant, Class VIII, Carmel Convent School, Chandigarh