The pervasiveness of social media in our lives, easy accessibility to smart phones and broadband internet connections, have made connectivity and information-access quite easy for billions of internet users around the world. This is indeed bliss – for we are just one click away from anyone/anything we want to reach at any moment of time. But this social media has entirely altered our standards of ethics and morality. In fact, social media has had a brutal onslaught on human morals or ethics, leading to a culture where a Facebook status, a tweet or an Instagram selfie is more important than real life issues. We see people dying, drowning, burning and brutally treated, and we sadistically capture their sufferings through the lens of our camera, only to upload it the next moment on the social media. What we want is more ‘likes’, ‘comments’, ‘views’ or ‘hits’ on the picture/video. A few days back when Amjad Sabri became a victim of brutal assassination, the pictures of his dead body drenched in blood kept circulating on social media minutes after his death. It was not only emotionally distressing, but sheer disrespect of the dead. Would any conscientious individual like to share the photos of the dead body of his near and dear ones on social media like this, particularly when they are ruthlessly murdered? Absolutely not. This is immoral to circulate uncensored and raw videos/images that depict violence, blood and gore. Such items cast a negative impact on many users of social media, especially faint-hearted and children.
Ostensibly, we are left with no traces of humanity in us. We see injustice and violence committed to people, as if we are numb. We watch people suffering in agony, as if their pain and cries is a theatre. Instead of extending a helping hand towards them, or at least sympathising with them, we stand like helpless onlookers or are quick to take our phones out, capture videos/photos and upload on social media in a bid to get more “likes”. We have become insensitive and emotionally barren. In fact, we are living in a pit of immorality and with every passing day we entrench much deeper into it. Who can forget the deafening silence of a crowd of thousands in Sialkot, when two brothers were made victims of sheer inhumanity right in the centre of the city? The crowd stood like silent spectators capturing the film of violence in their mobiles.
Let us realise – at least for once, that we humans are not social media robots. We need to awake our rationality, feelings and senses which are lost somewhere in the virtual world of social media.
Fakeha Faiz
Islamabad