Social Media & Its Celebrities: Beneficial or Detrimental?

Shamim Wahed: Social media has come to encompass almost every aspect of our lives, bringing more conventional and easier lifestyle for many reasons.

For historic fact, Egyptian came into the center of thinking and their action was on the discussing table in all powerful media for political upheaval to overthrow the regime of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. And obviously for Mexican revolution for survival that lasts long, and influence on Arab spring brings.

Social media with instant communication, unlimited access, pave the way of raising awareness through sharing knowledge generating idea, promoting business, spreading politics, has revolutionized modern society.  

After earnestly scrolling down several pages by scrutinizing every possible designation executed by Social media authority, I have finally come to know that so much false and fake news float in social media. Cheating people, harassing one another, and media scam created terrible consequences.

'The Nigeria Letter 419 Advance Fee fraud' is the most commonly known scam. The spreading of questionable or offensive content can spread quickly from one person to another, from one part to another part that can bring dangerous impact.

In the time of technological advances, the youth are dangerously addictive more to their Facebook IDs rather than their text books. Recently, our Prime Minister said that “In our time, we spend more time reading books ,now young generation spends more time using social media”.

Senior journalist A.K Azad’s recent article helps us figure out how women being treated badly using social media as he wrote an article titled on that “Facebook messenger, a new platform of torturing women”.

Experts on social media rightly pointing out that “No matter what you think, no matter how strong your privacy settings are, everything you post and every interaction you have has the potential to reach the rest of the world faster than ever before”.

With the passage of time, it seems that there has been a hard core harvesting to draw an attention to be a leading light here in our society or anywhere else in the world by pursuing irrational logic, brazenly caricatured or offensive language, and sadistic gesture on social media that- has an incredible evil power to influence our social and global discourse of life.

Expecting some likes, without thinking so much, sharing anything or posting anti social message on social media, became a regular matter. To express hypocritically nonsensical speech on social media putting all under the cover of “freedom of expression”- is becoming more common recently.

Young people try to become icons overnight increasing website traffic, having more subscribers on YouTube channel, and having more followers on social media blog.

The contents floating over all sorts of media made by people of this time sometimes do not lead our social and national commitment. In some cases, these contents on internet manipulate our cultural and traditional competence and national aspirations.

Some of us are making them celebrities entertaining ourselves without realizing impact of these activities. Flexible access to internet, cheaper devises is the strong reason for youth to visit website containing unethical and morally bad site.

Sulaiman Shukhon, a Social media activist, rightly cited on his Facebook page that “Due to wrong reason, popularity” has no value. Time is a merciless judge .Time eliminates wrong people, and erroneous theory even after decade or century goes by”.

Social activist Shukhon further suggested that “Whatever our mind tells us is always pure enough; thinking so is a complete foolishness. Mind is like a changeable memory card.”

The huge social network said Wednesday that 1.39 billion people log in to Facebook each month to scroll their News Feeds, communicate with friends and look at photos.

UK based online news paper ”The Huffington post”  made headline that “Facebook Is Now Bigger Than The Largest Country On Earth. If Facebook were a country, it would be the most populous nation on earth”.

As a matter of fact, this generation can play an important role in spreading knowledge through proper utilization of technology.

As social media matters; it is time to think again before posting or writing anything as these issues has a great impact on others.

The writer is a third year student of Jahangirnagar University. He can be reached at ([email protected])


risingbd/Dhaka/Mar 21, 2017/Shamim Wahed/Nasim