The youth of today has a very unique feature and interest to explore the things at their own and also to spread their horizon of knowledge and social network. They believe that every next stranger has a potential of becoming a friend, they want to become globalized and in this case social networking sites are providing one such fascinating and interesting platform to them through the medium of which they reaching out to build up a strong social network. Today is the time of Facebook and Twitter and many other famous social sites available which have given enough freedom to the young people to explore the world and its people at their own. A mobile phone without the apps of Facebook and twitter is a complete waste for the youngsters and; the flexibility, freedom of expression, availability are the reasons because of which; these sites have become so much important and attractive for the youth.
With the technology advancement the lives of the people have become very mechanical, today we have ample of time to spend with our gadgets but not with the people we live with. Although technology development is undoubtedly good but it has also created and widened the gap between generations. When such social networking sites are so easily available for the youth they tend to get alienated from their real surroundings and its people. Even the surveys also convey that out of the 32% of the total Indian youth, 20% of the youth has an access to the social networking sites and this is not at all surprising because if today even a rickshaw wala and a doodh wala can manage to have a profile page at Facebook then why not the youngsters who are enough smart and intelligent to make a use of such sites. If on the one hand social networking sites have given freedom and flexibility to the youngsters then at the same time their lives are no longer being private, every aspect of their lives has become public there is nothing hidden right from; what they eat in the breakfast to where are they freaking out and with whom is frequently updated on these social sites. With the persistent interference of the social networking sites; the life, mind-set, ideas and thoughts all have been deeply impacted for the youth and the following points would describe those impacts:
· Reduced closeness within the family: as I already said that the youngsters are getting fascinated towards using new gadgets and applications and thus, their much of the time is consumed with their personal laptops or phones and on the top of that in accessing the social networking sites. They have no time to spend with the elders, parents, and kins in the family thus their closeness and intimacy within the family is getting affected.
· Focus has been diverted: most of the school and college going students are majorly found to be accessing the social networking sites, the time they should utilize in studying or doing some constructive activities they actually spend it in doing unproductive things on these sites like posting pictures, sharing videos, posting useless statuses, their focus has been certainly diverted.
· Exposure to many foul and unnecessary things: sometimes too much of openness leads to many unnecessary things which have nothing to do with us, likewise everything is open on the social networking sites and everything is available it only depends on the person what he/she wants to see and refuses.
· Increased stimulation for appreciation: according to a survey the people who are habitual of accessing the social sites are somewhere prone to the addiction of getting likes and comment over the things they do post on their profile pages. Very less and none of the likes make them depressed and same is applicable for the youngsters they want to get more and more likes over their personal pictures. This stimulation of getting likes and comments make them behave awkwardly sometimes, they tend to change and post new pictures everyday and even hourly.
· Increased anxiety and attachment to ‘good-image’: there is an increased tendency of anxiety and restlessness among the youngsters to become popular among all their friends on the social networking sites, they just want to pretend and show a perfect image of theirs in front of others. Though that is just a virtual platform but still the tendency of pretention easily cultivates in them.
· Wastage of time for some: some youngsters genuinely use the social sites to make good friends and to know about different things but for some these sites are just a medium of passing off the time. They spend hours and hours while scrolling down over other’s profile pages, liking nonsensical things and even commenting in bad manner on other’s post.
However, if we see this scenario; very philosophically then we would find that nothing is good or bad but it is intentions with which we perceive and act over something. There is nothing wrong in using the social sites in fact these are the good mediums of reaching out in the world and to get acknowledged but it all depends on our thinking and actions that how do we do it or how much better we make the use of these sites. There is no point of suppressing the youngsters from doing what they want to do but they deliberately need a good guidance, counselling and direction by their elders, teachers and parents. They should be taught to perceive the things in their right perspective then only they would be able to transform their actions in a constructive way no matter then even if it is to do with using the social networking sites as well.
Lately, when Indian Prime Minister made a statement that “Today’s youth is online”, something that was left unnoticed was the adverse effects of same. I agree that Indian youth is making an efficient use of social media in this age of startups but at the same time, they are losing the life #offline. Excess of everything is bad and sadly, our youngsters are are turning to the addiction of social media. This is saddening and requires to be worked upon!