Social media responsibility
Post by on Monday, March 14, 2022

Like other cultures and societies we have an adopted system build on the binaries of mental constructs that form the two degrees in between which we judge things. Good as one extreme has an antagonistic opposite bad or evil, right has wrong, virtue has vice and so on. We do not repudiate being judgmental or consider the attributes as only mental and therefore unreal. We judge, actions and behaviour of our colleagues, fellow mates, friends and adversaries. Before technology shrunk the space of human interactions, our judgments were shaped by conscience refined by social variables and personal experiences at length. Wise people and elderly were referred to for advice because they had seen it all having outlived others. But today, flocked sometimes as friends in a social space with people who have diverse tastes and distanced views, we must spend some time to think about our actions and judging people. In virtual space platforms like twitter and face book provide for a different kind of human interaction and social encounters. In virtual world our actions are as much ours and human as in real world, which can be a boon or a bane. While interacting in the new space we can share our views, express ourselves and communicate with others. At the same time, we can hurt others by acting irresponsibly. In real world human interactions happen to be more controlled by proximity and presence. In a hall where people have difference in opinions very few awkward and embarrassing situations happen when someone without any constraint would try to hurt someone else. But in virtual world, devoid of human presence, people often write first and think later. These situations put lives of many in jeopardy as judgments traverse the medium, with more profiles and humans representing them. A profile missing in everything except a vague name goes muckraking without there being muck in the first place. An irresponsible act like sharing or uploading someone’s picture, commenting on it, etc., without making any attempt to ascertain facts is next to blackmailing. Although there are preventive laws for the real and the virtual world, but before laws our social apparatus has to come into play. We have a space that is meant to be used for a good reason and good ends. Let us not make this space a battleground or a platform to carry out vendetta, to abuse and hurt others. Obviously, the ones who discovered and invented the new social space didn’t put too many checks as they left it to people to exercise self-restraint.