Social media use

The world in general and India in particular has been witnessing massive misuse of social media. A short glance at social media posts any given day will reveal that most of them are irrelevant, useless, negative, derogatory, abusive, indecent, unnecessarily critical, and at times even a threat to social harmony. While social media takes away a lot of valuable time from one's daily life, a large section of people are in fact spending a lot of their valuable time on social media at the expense of their important work. It is a sheer wastage of time to log into social media sites if they are not of one's top interest. The challenge with the young generation is that they cannot tell when they become addicts to social media networking. Social media should not become a stumbling block on one's road to success. One should not behave like a bonded labourer while operating on social media. But that exactly is what most of our young people are doing. And among the older people, a sizable section are wasting valuable time on social media which they had earlier utilised in reading, visiting and helping friends and neighbours, and discussing positive and constructive issues. A recent study in the US has said that social media, along with television and video games have led to wastage of thousands of valuable hours by the average American. According to the study, the average Amerian has been spending about 400 hours per year in social media which neither contributes to personal growth and well-being, nor to the betterment of the society. The study has suggested that if one spent even a small portion of that time wasted in social media in learning new skills, it would have led to both personal gain as well as social benefit. Another study has revealed that globally, educated people are spending nearly 2.5 hours every day on social networks and messaging. In India, people on an average are said to be spending about 2.4 hours every day on social media, most of the time being spent on forwarding or sharing cheap and stale jokes, boasting about petty personal things, and so on. In comparison, a Japanese person on an average is spending only about 45 minutes on average.