A Shield of Glass

 Have you realized it yet that you were supposed to use Social media and not the other way around?Nah?Okay,welcome to my blog then.

When you're were young you saw your mum or dad praying and you too started doing that.Now its your habit.Yes,you are now smart enough to have your believes and faith but that sight your mom praying sparked the thought in you.You read a book and it made a way into your thinking process.This is what we made up of.Human psychology is inspired from everything happening around us.We see things and without even noticing they become our preception.That's what we are,We are cumulation of all the minute inspirations or thoughts we pick knowingly or unknowingly from what we see,hear and experience.On that note,I want to remind you that major part we see hear or experience in these times is Social Media and we all know what its made of.

Technology has created a parallel reality where can be whatever we want to be and we control this world.We get decide what we do.We can be anything.Basic idea was to socialize and escape from reality so that we could breathe for little while in.What a beautiful idea it was until we get to control it.We did to this what we are doing to nature in real life.If you compare,you will find many similarities but i am not going that path,that's a blog for some another day.We ruined it.We saw as opportunity to fake,to hate and turn mean to others.We can get away with anything no matter how unethical, immoral or illegal that is.We hold no accountibility to any one.

We see our friends, colleagues or celebs flaunting their lifestyles on social media and we get this feeling to reflect the same.In doing that we often forgets everybody is not the same.We borrow,rent or steal things and thoughts to display ourselves bigger and better.Not everybody owns a muscle car or can afford a yearly trip to Bali and that's okay.We all have our different hustles.We all have different goals.But what lead us to be this pretentious?Why we seek all this? Attention.We,youth are in so dire need of attention  these days that we don't understand what consequences its going to have.We let Social media get into our heads.We are so empty from inside that we have convinced ourselves that superficiality is okay.We want everybody to praise us or consider us supreme for all the expensive things we have.Whether posting a story showing Mercedes logo on steering wheel while driving or eating Maharaja Mac,you don't want to miss an opportunity to show your virtual friends that you're living a high end life.What a slave we have become.

We have made social media a getaway from hardships but we have forgotten that we don't get away from hardships,we deal with them.we face them and we learn from them.Turning a blind eye from troubles, isn't gonna make them go away,it instead will keep piling them up and eventually they become too much to handle. Procrastination,being mean or insensitive, bigotry,we have made them our personality.We feel pride in putting people down.Fake standards have been set up and who doesn't make upto them is ridiculed and 'put to his place'.

Keyboard might not look as lethal as a sword but actually its way more dangerous than a sword.We are swinging this sword blindly,unaware of the possibility of causing grave injury to someone without even us noticing and in some cases not even regretting.While swinging the sword we forgot that the shield we are hiding behind is both figuratively and literally made of glass.

Have you noticed when there was no social media ,cases of mental health issues were very rare.People didn't have this unnecessary pressure over their minds.Social Media acted as a catalyst and all this changed drastically.According to American psychological association,cases of mental health in younger generation have increased significantly in last decade.Can you imagine the brain drain it causes?All these young, talented people in their prime,fallen prey to the judgements of fake Virtual society.Rapid increase in Introversion is also the result of it.Kids refuse to step out of their rooms and they spend all their time with their phones and gadgets.As they grow up,they don't get to learn how to behave our socialize in real world.As a result,they develop mental disorders like social anxiety, depression etc.This needs to change.Let this not to be the start of the end of our civilization.

So am i saying social media is bad?or I shouldn't use it at all?

Answer to both these questions is No.Social media isn't a good or bad,It is what it is.You will find both good as well as bad on it.But for you to use it,you need to have a clear mindset.Be smart enough to distinguish what you want to see or hear and what not to.Its only that real as you let it to be.Life is beyond this and it's not as horrible or pretentious.You know this already,you just need to do something about it.

Don't just turn into a sheep and follow what others are doing.Question your brain whether I want to be judgemental about this person I am seeing on my screen or not.We can't change social media,even stupid to think about it but what we can do is make an effort to change ourselves.People earlier used it to take a break from their busy life schedule and look where we are now.You need to take a break from this 'break' before it breaks you.

Let's keep our sanity in place.

-Ankush Sharma