SOCIAL MEDIA;UNVEILING OUR SHYNESS
By Lubnah Abdulhalim
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| Photo Courtesy: dazeinfo.com |
You probably have heard of the old times or watched from the television shows or movies of the morals of the previous generations. Many of us may sit down and criticize those tough moral measures that were kept on our parents or grand parents or even great grand parents. We get amused at how parents those times were and laugh sarcastically, calling them 'old fashioned'. Irony is, we are the ones to be pitied. We the current generation, the children of 21st Century, the children of the internet; we are the ones to be mocked and laughed at.
Though the internet and development of technology has brought to positive benefits in our lives, we fail to see how the social media has unveiled all our shyness and modesty in the name of freedom and choice. I mean, look at the old folks and listen to their love stories. How lovers had to meet in forests and hideouts, how the tale of their love would be top most secret, how touching a lady was such a big deal that one would be beaten up and stoned by the entire neighbourhood by the mere rumour that the boy is stalking a certain girl. Listen to the struggle a man had to go through before ever getting a girl or being accepted to marry him. Listen to how the girl in love would hide and bury all her emotions and never conceal to anyone that she met her lover today. Maybe that's why the old folks know the meaning of true love and how to respect a woman, that's because they know the struggle they had to go through with the girl's parents before finally making her his better half. That's because, they learnt it the hard way. Listen to how a girl would skillfully hide that she went out with friends without permission from her father; how she would be scared to death on what would happen to her if her father found out she went for a picnic with friends. A young boy smoking weed or hanging out with wrong friends would trick his parents for years giving them the idea he is being a responsible boy. I am for sure not supporting pretence but this just shows how as much as people were doing the wrong things, they were ashamed to tell it to their parents or to let the society see their misdoings openly.
So you see a girl coming out from home in her long dress looking very decent and simple and decides to stop over a friend's place to change into tiny skimpy dress and for some makeup. This was ofcourse to remain top secret. Then lets have a look at how social media has brainwashed our minds. We were made to believe that we can be whatever we want to be, we can live as freely as we want and in fact, we can put a stop to these old folks interfering with our lives. That we shouldn't be ashamed of anything. We were fed with images of singers, dancers and lovers and we were made to believe it's totally OK to be half naked, to show every fine detail of our bodies, we were made to believe that love is random and intimacy before marriage is totally OK, I mean, we all have feelings right? It's your utmost freedom whether or how you want to deal with those feelings. We are made not to care how painful it would be for our parents to know what we are doing, we are fed with the idea that we are adults and no one should control our actions. So now all we have in our social media is of all kinds of girls showing off their bossoms and bottoms, their hips and hair clips. We have the boys talking of their nights in gangs smoking shisha and weed and literally believing they are stars. And we have the lovers talking openly of how they spent their days and nights together. So where is our modesty here? Is there any shyness left? So who is to blame here? Whom are we going to blame that women are no longer respected and that the women no longer respect their spouses? Whom will we blame when our daughters tell us they are pregnant and our boys, HIV positive?
The social media has enslaved us. It has made us grow with ridiculous opinions and dreams. It has made us cheap. I am quite sure that atleast 50% of the social media users or even more would have a totally different character had they lived without social media. Many regard it as an eye opener to reality but it has not only opened our eyes, it blinded us thereafter. It has made us hypocrites of our own souls, it has drained all the moral teaching we ever had, while feeding us with stories of low life people who are made to be worlds' stars. We are made to envy the bodies of actresses and models, we are made to be thrilled by their kind of life which is made up of only three things; Wealth and fame while they are keen to not mention their third characteristic of their private lives and that is depression. So girls go crazy over singers and take half naked pictures like them and imitate their hairstyles and fashion. The boys on the other hand fancy the nights out surrounded by women with smoke everywhere and ofcourse this scenario is so much beautified that our poor boys think of it like paradise.
If i may guess, approximately 70% of social media users would not be willing to show their parents their social media accounts. That's because, many youth have so much that parents have totally no idea about. A poor mother somewhere thinks her daughter is a virgin yet she's totally not. Another thinks that her daughter is very decent and is very proud to say that to the neighbour, and the neighbour just laughs sarcastically at this poor woman because the whole world knows her daughter is not a saint as she thinks. So we let the whole world know us; what we wear, whom we love, where we go, which part of my face I have a pimple and where I got a dimple, the whole world knows that I spent the night at a boy's house while my dear parents think their 'very good daughter' is at a friend's place studying. The whole world knows; except the dearest people in our lives whom we keep deceiving. And we are so proud of that that we count ourselves as superstars.
Nonetheless, there are parents who have also been swept off by social media and totally don't mind this so called 'freedom' on their children. Parents have stopped setting limits and showing their children, 'this is the red line. Do not cross it.' So how can we blame the youth completely? How can you blame a girl for posting her half naked picture while her mother was there while she was taking the snap and totally said nothing? How can we blame the boy for sleeping around with different women yet his parents very well know he didn't spend the night home and wasn't asked what he is up to? And yes, if parents keep being irresponsible and acting just as immature as their children then we can't hope for a better future.
Whereas we; the current generations were expected to learn from our folks' mistakes and become more responsible than they were in their youth age, we have totally failed with that. We; the social media generation, are the rotten generation and I honestly don't think anyone really anticipates how the future generations would be as technology continues to grow. If you are still sane enough in this insane world then thank your Lord and pray that you die with your senses in place.
