HOW SOCIAL MEDIA SILENTLY OVERRIDES OUR EMOTIONS ( Amanambu Anita Chidera) St. Augustine's College, Oghara.

 

                                                                                     Amanambu Anita Chidera                                                                                                                                                                                              

Social media has become one of the most sustainable platforms for self-expression. Self-expression happens to be one of the most basic human needs.

The media has allowed us to share ideas, connect with people around the world, and express our opinions on issues. Social media offers us an arena to showcase our talents and an opportunity to become famous and to be known. Just think of the billions of people in this world and how impossible it seems to be known beyond your town or even your neighborhood. And then imagine the millions of people who follow you in the media simply because they love watching you do whatever you put on the internet, whether it be informative or simply entertaining. Or how vast the entertainment media has become to the extent that we are now entertained by the activities of celebrities on set?

Surprisingly, we take time out from our daily activities just to watch other people's activities for fun. We share a part of the lives of celebrities by watching them on reality shows - shows like Keeping Up with the Kardashians, 90 Days Fiance, Too Hot to Handle, Big Brother, and many others that I do not need to mention.

Sure, the media does a lot to entertain us and we have become addicted to watching it all, but how ignorant we are of the damage the media can do to our emotional lives. 

 From my observations, I have crowned one of its problems with our emotions as an "inferiority complex": the people we follow on social media are the people we look up to, the people we want to be like, and the people we admire. By constantly watching them, we gradually come to see their lifestyle as superior to ours, and then we let their view of life prevail over ours, we now feel that they are better than us in every way and that their opinions matter more than ours. A good example of this is a conversation I had with one of my classmates who feels inferior to celebrities of his age who are already seen as 'gods' and emerging legends. He feels that they are in a better position to see life as easy than he is because they are already earning money and being loved at an early age, so he sees them as superior to him. His emotional life and esteem are quietly overridden by emotions. 

There is also another problem that arises from the media, that of "falsehood". The decision of many celebrities is influenced by the opinion of the masses, mostly content creators. This is because the masses only like them because they do what impresses them, which may be against their wishes. Now the media influencers and celebrities are subject to the media on the side of the masses, due to the inferiority complex caused by seeing these people often, we start imitating them and doing things we do not naturally do - leading to a false lifestyle. And sometimes it may not really benefit us, but we want to fit in.

But again, it is possible to use or impress the media without letting it override our opinions and emotions. We can choose to be 'us', who we really are. Few celebrities are still naturally who they are to the public and are still loved despite the criticism against them.

  • Value your worth: we are all important, as valuable as those we look up to on social media. we keep measuring our worth by theirs, forgetting that everyone has their own skills. we all have talents and abilities to help people around us and to entertain people. using our given skills/talents can make people get to know you, whether on media or not, and you will be loved. But if you keep focusing on others and wishing you were like them, you will never discover your own source of value and talent.
  • Limit the hours spent on the media: we spend too much time on social media, distracting us from focusing on our lives and improving them. the problems of media stated earlier are a result of addiction to the media. Watching the media constantly makes us dependent on it. Create a special time to use it and then use the media judiciously for a befitting purpose.
  • Embrace your priorities: Priorities are the most important things to you in life. Our priorities are, our religion, family, studies, career, friends, etc. We should spend more time on our priorities, these are things that will help us more rather than excessive use of social media. People with misplaced priorities see social media as the most important.

In the light of the above, we can deduce that the social media has its advantages and disadvantages. But with judicious and timely use of the media, we can prevent the harm stated above. In all, we should value ourselves because everyone is important in one way or the other.

 

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