DOES SOCIAL MEDIA ROB US OF OUR HUMANITY?

Padili James Mikomangwa
Information has been vital to the human race regardless of occupation, creed nor societies cultural aspects, the capability of acquiring necessary and vital information has never been obsolete and will not any time soon. The media platform has experienced a lot of changes for the past decades, where by technology has been shaping the way information is gathered, managed, prepared, disseminate to the respective audience and interpreted by the very huge audience with variety of ideas, skills and thinking capability.

Exploring the current global technological development on social related issues, the discovery and emergence of social media platforms have brought intensive changes to human beings of vast scales from communication behaviors to the way people react to several topics raised. Social media is a creative solution brought to life in 1970’s and took charge fully in 1995 that provides virtual communication accessibility to millions of users across the globe. Billions of people access various of social media outlets on daily basis, from Facebook, Youtube, Wechat to Whatsapp Messenger.

Now more than ever our need for updated information is great and results into emergence of unconventional way of presenting it. As technological advancement paves the way of social media to be integrated into our daily routines the more we open up to it the more it shapes us unwillingly and swiftly. Across the world people create and share various sorts of images, short video clips and messages for the sake of information dissemination, nothing is wrong with that, but when the core values of humanity are faded away by the convergence of information dissemination then something is totally wrong.

Humanity can be known as the virtue associated with basic ethics of altruism desired for human condition, where by innately it is integrated and induced in us by nature and we all know by one way or another humanity value as a race. I strongly believe that social media outlets with their unique designed features were set out for the mass to connect people more closely and virtually communicate things regardless of existing technological or physical hindrances compared with the old media dominance.

Exposing the reality on the table, before we had Whatsapp Messenger apps on our beloved attention grabbing smart phones, we had respect for the afflicted and suffering gave them a hand, restored their faith and swept away courage, whilst keeping their pain a secret to preserve their respect for the rest of the society that might be not humane enough. Just not long ago our cultural aspects kept the youth in line and maintained order within our communities, opposite to that our contemporary society works differently now, if one surveys around the major four  social media platforms Facebook, Youtube . Whastapp Messenger and Instagram might find a chunk of disturbing data far beyond imagination. Nudity, profane and cliched statements, horrific images and short video documented by amateurs to boost their online attendance rates up for their video to go viral (I wonder if most of us know even what that means).

We are no longer social again compared to the last decades, people might be in a room but do not talk any thing of sense because their phones take over, we seldom share our feelings verbally now days, Instagram and Whatsapp Messenger status got us covered on that. Funny enough in this era of unprecedented information sharing we fail to distinguish between free speech and utterance of complete blabber We are no longer interested in real criticism, page and video views likes , dislikes, thumbs up and thumbs down represent the entity of what is and what is not. Bear in mind that these virtual criticism abilities do not really reflect the brutal truth, they are merely digital operations with no life in them. Much worse a good number of people take them serious and they are transforming the way we think and act on all major life scales.

Vital humane characters get fewer and fewer to majority of smart phone users, most of the unskilled thinkers don’t fathom the power of person to person interaction and the need to adopt isolation of things related people lives from sharing and modifying information via their chaotic personal digital platforms. People now days don’t bother to double check information they read, see or hear as longs as it came from their desired  trusted source.  Let us bear in mind the fact that, social media has no editorial figures, no information gate keepers, few policies and privacy terms are observed when people have crossed lines way over their depth and more than once.

In Tanzania there is a rampant rise of unskilled, unconventional and fact less self appointed online political commentator plus activists. These intellectual mobsters rob people of their reasoning ability and dictate the way opinions are laid over pertaining particular topics especially those which shape the news.  No more exhaustive thinking due to easy access of information at our finger tips, we do not place our digital devices aside and examine those videos we receive hourly if they are worst of our phone storage. Our need to make every day count has been divorced.

 By just assessing the traffic found within these apparatus, time invested in them plus the nature of information shared worldwide, we find how much we have embedded our selves into a gigantic scheme that robs us of few vital acts of kindness to the human race that nourishes our minds capability to contemplate complex subjects, soul and the body at large.
So far I find social media outlets usage to a large extent to be more instant gratifying and less helpful, generous, caring, sympathetic to the human good cause. We depend so much on prepared information for our consumption which by the way is not filtered and sad enough we barely even scratch it too see if logic, facts, relevance and respect to the human life is within them. 

We have built a tolerance for foolish things circulating amidst of our social media platforms which I believe pose a great advantage if used wisely, this tolerance has numbed us and paved a way for a new way of thinking and reacting to imminent matters that require a deep understanding of things, quite contrary to that we have left poorly learnt, read and unconventional writers to think for us and relay their decayed thoughts for our attention, to which we react like savages when critical issues are presented to us with no order, facts and far less evidence to back them up.

With time spent on our devices, so the ability to think exhaustively and critically fades away. Everything we need to explore and put thing together for a concise understanding is out in the open, human to human experience, observing the natural setting, meditation expands our touch with the world in a holistic dimension. Technology has immensely improved, saved and changed people’s lives. Remarkably there has been huge and vast changes to the human life due to technology, however when technology doesn’t sustain the human mind cognitive ability, nourish physical well being nor preserve one’s soul from utter destruction then it is far from humanity.

We are faced with an array of attention requesting matters just to list a few, climate change, poverty, environmental degradation, crime, diseases the list goes on and on, I strongly believe social media rubbish that doesn’t make us more brilliant in any aspect of our lives should be  stranded on the spot, in this 21 century world every second counts and we are a click or swipe away from richness or impoverishment, order or chaos, utter nonsense and intellectually driven facts/statements as well as savagery or humanity.




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