WhatsApp Mania

Jagmohan Sharma
The advent of smartphone in our day to day life is indeed a revolutionary milestone in the history of mobile communication. With a smartphone in your hand you don’t just hold a gadget but the whole world seems to be in your hand…., in your control .
Social media interfaces like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, have given each of us a platform to communicate with people, express ourselves and pass on any information, thought or feeling that comes to our mind . One such medium, or we can say the most popular app/platform is WhatsApp which is being utilised by almost everyone using a smartphone. Being a free facility to exchange text, photos, videos, or jokes and other information has resulted in an excessive use of it. No doubt it is an excellent facility which has made communication easy,convenient and economical as well as it almost free. However an excessive use is making us akin to addicts and the real problem begins here.
The first thing you do in the morning is to get immersed into WhatsApp and check out the deluge of messages received as well as forward them randomly without batting an eyelid. During work hours – be it a professional or a housewife, — there exists a perennial craving to check out the messages every time the smartphone blips. Not able to do so leads to anxiety and impatient behaviour. We spend a lot of time thinking and planning for the next upload. Performance and responses to your posted messages and pictures is always running in the background of your mind. The curiosity to know who has seen the post, who all have liked or disliked or replied to it becomes your top most priority of the day. This invariably results in neglecting your real responsibilities and hobbies in favour of scrolling the smartphone. Psychologists say it is going to harm our behavioural qualities as well as our capability of thinking and approach to various issues confronting us. Anyway that is a different aspect altogether but what my personal observation is that social media in one way or the other is making us unsocial in true sense. When I get up in the morning I prefer to grab my smartphone instantly and rummage through the heap of forwarded messages. I delete the scores of unsolicited messages as most of them are just forwarded-as- received wishing us a very good morning. That obviously seems to have been sent just to register a presence and maybe in this exercise, we half- heartedly are forced to acknowledge with a smiley or a folded hand icon. Just a couple of weeks back, I rang up a very good friend of mine and requested him not to send me good morning wishes. I never wanted him to be counted among the lot whose communications are relegated as emotionless and insensitive. There were days when we used to write letters and each and every word was passionate and meant for the addressee. With the excessive encroachment by the social media in our everyday life, we don’t have the time or inclination to put our own feelings or creations into our messages … there is always a quick way out to copy paste messages whose originator nobody knows..
One such monumental blunder I did this Mahashivratri festival needs a special mention here. Usually on all important days or festivals, greetings or messages sent by me are invariably my own creation. These are designed and written by me exclusively for my friends and acquaintances and they do appreciate my gesture of exclusive expression. But what I did that day was to forward a Shivratri greeting received by me without reading or noting what actually was written in it .Actually the gentleman had sent a beautiful image depicting Lord Shiva with his Trident and Trinetra. It was very appealing indeed but had the sender name and designation clearly inscribed at the bottom of the image. I instinctively did what most of the WhatsApp users are doing these days ….. just forwarded it to all near and dear ones . I appreciated myself for saving some time in creating an exclusive message. However the happiness was short lived as the very next day an acquaintance met me and greeted me with the words….” AAP TO AISE NA THE…….”. This made me realise my blunder and wonder how deep these tendencies have crept into our lives. These are more of a reflex action rather than any conscious effort to share our feelings. More ironical is the fact that even after a week gone by, none among the scores of contacts who received the greetings even noticed it. Maybe some had noted but simply ignored it ….again proving the famous saying that “Only a true friend will tell you that your face is dirty”. The fact is even more harsh…. we are losing true friends in reality. Credit goes to WhatsApp Mania… and social media.
It may sound immature to believe that all this is going to change in foreseeable future or people will restrain themselves from the reckless use of technology. As of now, it is sensible to tread the middle path & make optimum use of the available mediums. Let us not allow the social media to make use of us as guinea pigs and allow the creators of these modern day demons to laugh all the way to their banks. Relations among individuals are dictated by passion and inner feelings, not by smartphone beeps and ringtones. That is an absolute reality and one fine day it will be all pervasive.
(The author is a Dogri News Anchor at AIR, Jammu)
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