The menace of the social media

In his essay ‘My Gentle Readers’ P G Wodehouse says, “I have often felt a little sorry for writers like Cicero who operated in the days before the post office came into existence. For, as everybody knows, an author’s success can be estimated by the number of letters he receives from readers.”

If Wodehouse was alive today, would he be sorry for the writers who operated in the days before the advent of the e-mail and social media? In the days of the post office, a letter addressed to you would not reach you the same day. Wodehouse couldn’t have even imagined that a day would come when letters would be delivered the moment it is sent.

But the problem in this era of social media is that of belief. Social media is awash with fake, flawed and skewed news. It seems that social media killed in-depth reading and desecrated reading into ‘browsing’. Many people on social media browse superfluous content and get accurate knowledge about nothing and propagate half-truths.

On social media, the creator, editor, printer and publisher are the same. Hence, social media has virtually become a social menace.

Social media is not only flooded with fake news and skewed views but also with outright lies. I have seen a black and white photograph of a temple with the caption ‘Guruvayur Sreekrishna Temple in 1730’ being widely shared on FB. The person who posted it and those who share it forgot that the first photograph was taken in 1827. The camera was perfected only by 1839.

The lockdown forces us to practice social distancing. But social media had already pushed us into an era of social distancing. We are far away from people who live around us. We lost the social intimacy of the pre-social media era as social media has turned us into islands. In the family, each member is an island separate from the other. Social media deleted from our minds the feeling of missing. If we are online, we miss nothing. Can we spend even a single day offline in this day? We are always online. Social media consumes a major chunk of our time, day or night. Social media has made us aliens.

As Alice goes to the (unreal) wonderland through the rabbit hole, we go to the unreal world of lies and gossip and self-boasting through the hole of social media and get lost there forever. I don’t think Wodehouse would be sorry for the writers including him who operated in the pre-social media era.