Social media is an imaginary world that exists in the “cyber space” where everything seems perfect; a quixotic platform where people have different fake versions of themselves – mainly to create an impressive, sugar-coated self-image. A world where everyone seems to know the answer to every problem, but the same people struggle to solve a simple problem in real-life. A world that has torn many families apart and severed even the most cordial of relationships; one that has made a handful of men go into fraudulent activities, to measure up with bogus and deceitful social expectations. It is indeed an escape zone, where a number of ladies only belong, if they know how to “slay” with sexy lips, turning themselves into cartoons, scary dolls, while outrageously advertising ” false beauty without brains.”
The so-called social media has skyrocketed the spreading of fake news and hate speeches. Talk of a platform where hackers have many preys to exploit, social media immediately comes to mind. This a “world” that has led to the death of many young women, who religiously followed the deceptive postures of men, and thus, led to the slaughter-house. It has psychologically reconfigured the mindsets of many, especially the millennial, to become addicted to an unproductive euphoric world that never exists.
Social media, being an interactive computer-mediated technology that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, career interests, and other forms of overt and covert expressions, could be leveraged on for positive impacts such as – sharing informed views, career development and connecting with people from different walks of life, even from one’s bedroom. But many young people waste their time developing contents that expose them to grave dangers, privacy breach, identity theft, frauds and addiction to fake lives, especially where most of the social networks exploit them by marketing those contents and data to businesses, to enrich themselves.
If you aren’t paying for a service, it is a sure sign that you are the product rather than the consumer. Your data and contents, views, demographical information and those of your friends and friends of friends are what all the social media networks sell to businesses, politicians, researchers, data aggregators to make their revenues. For example, Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data breach revealed that more than 87 million Facebook users (friends, friends of friend, demographic information, address, email address, phone numbers and other personally identified information) data were harvested by an app without the users’ consent in order to manipulate users psychologically for political gains.Facebook internal files seized by the UK Parliament also shows that users data are harvested without the user’s consent. Also, in September 2018, a vulnerability in Facebook’s “view as” feature allowed hackers to access information of more than 30 million Facebook users – this could allow the attackers takeover users’ accounts not only on Facebook but also other services that the user used Facebook to login to.
Cyber-bullying has become the order of the day. Billions of people, especially the women are being harassed every single second on social media, either to exploit them monetarily or for sexual gratifications. This has led to increase in low self-esteem in the younger generation, alcohol addiction, rape incidents, myriad of domestic abuses, suicide, fraud and even bullying people to join terrorist and different cult groups.
Relationship values are degenerating every day, as a result of social media antics. People prefer to relate with their smartphones than they do with their real-life friends. Imagine couples checking their smartphones to reply a chat during a consummation. Many people can no longer spend time to concentrate while discussing with loved ones without being distracted by social media. Social media has taken the place of “Love.” The love of people now comes only and only after the love of social media. Truth be told, with the social media, we have lost the hitherto refreshing human touch! Everything has become a matter of déjà vu.