“Harry felt a chill in his stomach, as Professor McGonagall struggled to find words to describe what had happened. He did not need her to finish her sentence. He knew what the Dementor must have done. It had administered its fatal Kiss to Barty Crouch. It had sucked his soul out through his mouth. He was worse than dead.” Dementors are the foulest of the creatures from the fictional world of Harry Potter who thrive on the souls of their victims and leave them deprived of happiness and intelligence. Though it seems that such a diabolical creature can exist only in a fictional world but we all have a dementor every time in our pockets, i.e the smartphone and its social media applications that are sucking the happiness of its users and leave them hungry for recognition and attention.
According to Eric Berner, a renowned Psychiatrist, the idea of infants desiring physical contact can be applied to adults as well. However, physical contact in adults does not necessarily need to be physical, it can be symbolic, verbal, or a gesture like a hug, smile, or compliment. Unfortunately, in this digital age, the need for physical contact or recognition has been replaced with digital recognition. A click on the like or dislike button from a stranger can alter our moods and mental condition. This has carved us into unsocialized creatures who are continuously seeking recognition and acceptance from strangers.
Another substandard culture induced by social media is influencer culture. Influencers are creating these unrealistic and fake living standards that when one compares oneself to them, one becomes distressed and depressed. The notion of beauty is confined to the filtered and photoshopped images of models, and the idea of being healthy is broken down into six-pack abs and zero-sized figures. These fictional lives are staged as realities on social media that propel young women and men into an inferiority complex. They consider this posed and artificial material on social media as their normal measures of beauty and perfection, they begin to expect that for themselves, and when they, inevitably, can’t reach that measure of false perfection, they begin to question and even dislike themselves, thus experiencing lower self-esteem and happiness in general.
Although social media has proved to be helpful in many cases, nowadays the cost of social media usage is more than its benefit. This cost-benefit analysis of social media needs to be done by everyone who wishes to enter its realm.
Solitude has become a luxury in this digital age. People have severe separation anxiety from their phones, they feel left out and uncomfortable if asked to spend some time with themselves. The attention span of a teenager has become less than a house fly. The idea of giving up on social media seems like an insufferable kind of torture, it leads to panic and trepidation in individuals. What is more noticeable is the immediate gratification we receive from social media; the boredom that is momentarily eased; the security that is artificially felt and the recognition that is insincerely and ineffectually given. We have confined our attention to notification alerts and happiness to external recognition.
Another very common but extremely toxic culture on social media is the meme culture. It has diminished all the boundaries of humor, the misery of an individual is clothed as a joke. People are always eagerly waiting for someone to take a fall so they can morph his torment into a joke for a few views and likes. Nowadays, everything can be made fun of, even death has fallen prey to this culture. Memes are not inherently bad; they provide a sense of community in groups with a shared interest, but their messages still matter, also not everything is made fun of. The threat of misinformation, the spread of harmful rhetoric or language, and the normalization of self-deprecation to get a few laughs walks closer to the line between humor and the socially unacceptable. Â Many a time in the past when an explicit chat, video, or audio of someone become viral and converted into a joke. It clearly shows where our priorities, as a society, lie. We all are just a viral chat, video, or audio away from becoming a joke.
Like the dementors in the wizarding world of Harry Potter, social media also seems to be draining energy, happiness, joy, and hope from the individuals who enter its domain. The happiness that is seeping out however, is so slow and steady that we barely seem to notice it. Although social media has proved to be helpful in many cases, nowadays the cost of social media usage is more than its benefit. This cost-benefit analysis of social media needs to be done by everyone who wishes to enter its realm. Everyone should spend more time with themselves, know the line between fake and real, and their needs and wants, also, People need to be far more conscious and cautious when it comes to consuming online content.
