Prof Javed Mughal
Modern era is under complete dominance of Facebook and Twitter cult especially ensnaring the psyche of teenagers and adults. Facebook has almost been an unavoidable chunk of daily conversation among our youths. Most often the cyber-cafes stand stormed by the young generation going in for chatting with their friends, in most of the cases, on frivolous issues or to the great extent on the sensual or pornographic lines. This all has barely laid a very scathing impact on the moulding of this flexible generation of the modern times. We must not forget, before allowing our teenagers, that the net life-concerning benefit is zero but the time wastage with an impractical and loathsome motivation of thinking is always visible there in Facebook usage. If we look into its originality, we come to the conclusion that consciously or unconsciously we are being propelled into darkness of futility and hollowness by the growing cult of this Facebook and Twitter. Now the question comes up: Are these social net-workings like Facebook and Twitter dangerous? Do they have some defects in them so as to spoil the young minds? The answer is obviously negative because there is nothing bad in anything in the world; rather the merit and demerit is always there in the usage of the product. For example two persons get to the market with same amount of money each. Either of them purchases study material for some competition and consequently succeeds and becomes a great man while the other spends the same amount in a tavern and falls on the way-side quite senseless. Police come and take him away, put him in the lock-up and the people despise him. The same amount of money that brought laurels to one, fetched disgrace to the other. The money is same but its usage has made all the difference. Obviously a currency note is not to be blamed. It is nothing in itself. Its status is decided by its usage. Hence it is foolish to ascribe all the worst to the social net-workings like Facebook. If they are proving counter-productive at one place, they have revolutionized the system of information on the other side where news breaks faster than satellite TV and it makes newspapers look ancient. From a war erupting in the Middle East, to the college buddy announcing his engagement, to the earthquake to that pretty face who is having a boring day; Facebook gets you all the latest updates. How can something which is as informative as Facebook make anyone more stupid? Governments, universities, international and local organizations, common interest groups, netas, celebrities, and next door aunty are all on Facebook and strongly feel that it is becoming indispensable to have an account. Facebook is something that cannot be ignored as a time pass fun that young folks indulge in. Some good tangible things that have come out of Facebook in our context are: creating a platform for debate and social awareness, the humanitarian works carried out by one of the Facebook groups, and re-connecting long lost friends. There are sceptics who are not in Facebook, and some others who simply don’t feel the need to be there. Then there are those people who live in Facebook and don’t have much of a life beyond it. As with any technology, either we make good use of Facebook, or let it derail our lives. One primary concern that I have felt is the sheer duration: the number of minutes/hours that we spend in it every day and educating our children how to make proper use of it; what is to be shared and what is to spared; and what areas of knowledge are to be focused and which portions are to be avoided. It is not good to withdraw our generation from Facebook but to teach them proper use of it instead. Yes, where the parents are satisfied that their children are not, yet, so strong as to counter the evil effect of these social net-workings, they can keep them away till they are ready to make an advantageous use of it. I have personally suffered the consequences of having spent God-knows-how-many-hours in it doing nothing. And only later have I realized that I’ve missed the boat on many other areas. Thankfully, I have completed college before Facebook was born. But it is worrying to think how many college students are hooked to Facebook, and how many of them really know how to balance it with studies and classes. I have personally experienced that the number one adverse effect that face-book had on me was that my reading time was severely shortened. I had a small plan that I’d reserve some amount of my salary each month to buy books. Books were bought while the reading fell behind. At a deeper level, online social networking can have grave consequences that are not easily discerned. The online social networking has the danger of reducing the meaning and value of human relationships, or even the way we perceive ourselves and others as human beings. It’s shocking to think that with online social networking, there’s a new generation of kids who has a much lower expectation of what a human being should be. In Facebook, I feel the dilemma of wanting to share my concerns and thoughts with others on the one hand, and the fear of being a show-off on the other. It’s a place where I enjoy and learn from the status updates, link posts, pictures, debates, jokes, etc. But Facebook also has its share of self-obsessed megalomaniacs who are so full of themselves. Attention-mongering narcissists who cry day and night, ‘Look at me, see how cool I am. See, I’ve been there, done that’. Many young boys and girls today are much more open-minded than before. They are not afraid to speak their minds. But we see in online discussions that many of the comments are more of emotional responses. Why is it so? I’d like to argue that it’s because we read (books) too less and don’t take time to think before we speak. And Facebook may be responsible for that to the great extent. If we spend too much time in Facebook, we aren’t going to get too much time to read, sit quietly and think, or go out and see what’s really happening around. Facebook, newspaper, and TV, no matter how useful are no substitute to reading books. But kids don’t read comic books anymore. Fewer college students read magazines, novels and other books. It is shocking that even our religious apostles these days have such poor knowledge of their religions. And we know it’s difficult to read long stuffs online. A worrying trend is that in the universities, students ‘google’ or quote secondary sources in the internet for their assignments more than real books or primary sources. We know a little of so much; but we know so little of anything. Our knowledge of the world is concentrated on filtered news, chatter, gossips, TV serials, infotainment, scandals, sports news, etc. And what we call ‘knowledge’ simply becomes ‘accumulation of information’ and we can’t make head and tail of what fits in where, and there is no such sense of a big picture of life and where the different jigsaw pieces fit in. It goes without saying that our generation is ‘addicted to nonsense; that our obsessions revolve around the trivial and the absurd while we are blind to our society’s and life’s big issues. And it is a disease that our generation is suffering from. We need to be entertained all day long, and we cannot sit quietly for once. And the devil makes sure that we are always entertained, making sure that we are always ‘diverted’ from what’s real. Facebook is something that we need to use and not the other way round. Facebook has its uses. But it should not be a substitute for genuine human relations. It should not kill our time to read a good book, reflect, or do a good deed in the real world. If it is too much to say Facebook is making us stupid, I think it’s safe to say that it’s making us shallow.
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