Daily Times

Facebook is proving actually fakebook including Twitter, Instagram and Tok-Tok and others because the walls of these media let the person hide behind the beauty of the pictures and fascinatingly intriguing messages. This has of late begun to cause more harm than the advantages social media was supposed to render. There have been sporadic reports of suicides or attempts for the same not only in Asian countries but also in Europe and the USA dismantling altogether the myth that social media is the platform for developing the power for the people. Ironically, it has lent less power and more fragility, especially for the vulnerable ones. For example, a young, accomplished and highly educated beauty queen, Ms Kryst, took her life because of cyberbullying. The same is the case with our young folks heavily indulged in social media. For example, it is reported that 40 per cent of young people under 25 suffer from mental agony, depression and schizophrenia because of over-indulgence in social media. This sufficiently supports the view that all is not good with social media.

There is no denying the fact that social media has given voice to otherwise isolated and silent individuals. Facebook has become a platform internationally to share not only pictures but also messages. A large number of individuals and companies are using it for the marketing of their products as well as for introduction, sustainability and credibility. Social media, like Twitter, has opened a new world for sharing and finding information and is being exploited by governments, organizations and other power groups. Rather, it has become a tool of easy outreach and reach-out to the people with a few clicks. Social media, being mostly out of the ranges of official control provides an excellent platform for earning, learning and making money. There are many instances of earning millions of dollars by simply sharing video clips. So, at the end of the day, it has proved a new battleground for competing for socio-political forces to take their due share out of the global world. It has become a major tool in creating a globally connected world.

But the same internationally connect platform has proved itself the world’s most dangerous tool in the hands of the evil mongering people. These days, social media gurus, pundits and tycoons are being accused of stealing the personal information of the individuals and communities and of utilizing and manipulating the same in marketing and for creating a specific, diverted and targeted opinion about governments, political opponents and for creating and developing a particular demand. These trends in social media are reducing it again to the level of mass-media hitherto controlled and manipulated powerful by capitalist and political forces. Cyberbullying and cyber-attacks have created ever-new demands for the establishment of the cyber force to implement cyber laws and rules, which is further calling for a new type of legislation because even after doing so much misuse of social media has so far been an unmanageable issue. If social media has provided a platform for academic and artistic creativity free of cost with plenty of opportunities, it has equally created fakeness, artificiality, copyright issues and most of them is reduced to another form of simulacra.

According to Global Social Media stats, almost 4. 62 billion users are connected now via social media with an annual growth of above 10 per cent annually. Similarly, Digital 2021 Pakistan reports that out of a total population of 223 million, 46 million are regular social media users. Such an enormousness of the popularity of social media in and out of Pakistan has produced a similar quantity and quality of the ills, harms, drawbacks, and evils of social media. The element of fakeness and hiding behind the walls of social media is a significantly disturbing issue. Many accounts are set up by the men and tend to show themselves girls to lure the young people into their traps to exploit and blackmail them. At twitter also, a new trend is visible that every pretty girl posting her picture is quoting herself as a doctor of the medical profession. This hugeness of a number of such accounts creates the very seeds of doubts about their authenticity and genuineness.

The ever-increasing spread of social media, especially among the youth is going hand in hand with the increase of cybercrimes and power control tools. And instead of remaining an untainted voice of the populi, there is a danger that it may not also become a tool in the hands of the imperialist mindset to control the thinking and psychology of the people. So, a three-pronged strategy must be practised to keep social media a platform for sharing views, dissemination of information and knowledge and for contributing to the wellness of the people. First, all nations at the level of the United Nations must join hands in legislating regimes, measures and laws uniform all around the globe. Second a full-fledged, fully equipped and appropriately cyber-trained cyber force, at the local as well as international level must be established to prevent the misuse of social media. And Third, through our syllabic and social teaching, we need to popularize workable and viable ethics to keep the social media world clean and useful otherwise the fakebook-ness of the social media will eat up its Facebook-ness.

The writer is a professor of English at Government Emerson University, Multan. He can be reached at zeadogar@hotmail.com and Tweets at @Profzee