The Dark Side Of Social Media

Our personal lives aren’t so personal anymore. A few years ago did it ever occur to you that the ‘future you’ would post photos of your lunch on internet for your friends and even strangers to see for absolutely no reason whatsoever? I don’t think so. It seems to me that the next step of human evolution is here- the Digital Humans! We lay bare all our problems, our frustrations and our triumphs on the social media sites and for what? To show off, for the most part, but also for people we don’t even know to judge us, to criticize our every move. From your new pet to the recent spat with your spouse, everything is made public.  Life is now unthinkable without social media- it is affecting who we are, what we do and how we interact with others. It’s not a part of our world anymore, it is our world.

The main point of these sites was to connect with the world, to broaden our sphere but in the last few years we are using these networks for a lot more than that. An interesting instance- a couple from Turkey exchanged their wedding vows via Twitter! We get so caught up in the digital world that we do not think about the consequences of our online actions. You may not be as involved in it as your friends, but it still makes an impact on you, how you portray yourself virtually, how others perceive you. We let your guards down the moment we share your life with strangers. Oddly, it empowers us. Behind the anonymity of the computer screen we feel empowered. This anonymity brings out some of our dark impulses that we suppress when we interact with others in real life. But once online, we behave differently.

Here in the virtual world even a grammatical mistake goes viral within seconds, a controversial comment can start a huge debate where people abuse each other ruthlessly without giving a single thought to how others are feeling about it, and how these scathing comments can leave a scar on others. The scariest part is once something is on internet, it stays there forever. It allows us to dig up dirt on people and use that against them. We can tarnish someone’s reputation with just a few comments. We feel so disconnected with the entire world that these human emotions do not work on us, whereas ironically internet was supposed to connect us with the world. We become overly critical once we are safely behind our computer screens.

Everybody here wants to be in the spotlight, to be ‘liked’ by people, we become unaware of the fact that every bit of our personal lives is being put up on the bulletin board for everybody to see. A single controversy can make a celebrity even more popular, most of the time it works in their favor. But what about people like us? How does this affect us? We are even more concerned with our image, after all our future depends on it.

“I feel angry. I feel victimized. I feel harassed. I feel hated. I feel discriminated again”

Said a freshman at Duke University who faced the worst case of cyber bulling, the reason being, she is a sex worker. She couldn’t afford the tuition fees of $ 60,000 and she didn’t want to take a loan, so she started working in the porn industry. For her, being a sex worker is nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to be tabooed. It doesn’t make her any less intelligent or even a lesser human being than her classmates. It’s her choice and she is proud of it. She wants to protect her privacy, understandably, because of the so-called “learned” people who are so critical of other people’s choices and lifestyle that they won’t stop at anything till they share their viewpoint with the whole world, not caring about the fact that it can destroy an individual’s self esteem. A friend had her identity revealed and there on started the downpour of abuse through social media platforms.

She received 230 friend requests on Facebook and people started following her alter-ego on Twitter. The students left no stones unturned to harass her, to degrade her for the choices she made. People came to know about her story because she spoke up against her bullies online. To her outburst several people have commented and not surprisingly, a huge debate started all over again with people abusing each other now. Some of them have congratulated her on her bravery, but many have commented against her point of view, claiming that she can never be a role model for girls because of her chosen profession. There was one comment worth mentioning- “I am allowed to have my own opinion about when you publicize it on the internet”. That is the main problem; some people have taken the concept of “freedom of speech” a little too seriously. But coming back to the point, why should this be happening to her? Why do people feel so superior that they can comment on anything or everything and suffer no consequences? These rude, unprovoked comments can lead to depression, feeling of inferiority; even force someone to take their own life.

Megan Meier, 13 was the victim of what was supposed to be a “joke”. Her former friend’s mother created a fake account on MySpace by the name of “Josh Evans” to “mess with her”. For quite a long time “Josh” gained her confidence, made her feel that he was her friend. On October 16, 2006 the messages started to change-

“Everybody in O’Fallon knows who you are. You are a bad person and everybody hates you. Have a shitty rest of your life. The world would be a better place without you.”

Megan hanged herself with a belt in her bedroom closet. She was pronounced dead the next day.

This was just a horrific instance of how these platforms are capable of influencing young minds. Virtual world is a kind of “make-believe” place, where you pretend to be someone you are not, where you are powerful enough to leave a mark on someone’s life. Parents nowadays prefer to stalk their children on Facebook rather than connecting with them on a personal level. Children, on the other hand, feel that the relationships they develop on social networks are more real than their real-life friends. This is what we have become, thanks to social media.