Many videos on social media are often completely misleading. , Photo credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto
In 2000, as a student in Delhi, I had to travel three days on the Kerala Express traveling between home and university. The train journey used to be so monotonous that time stood still. I used to take books for the time away. In the two mornings before the train reached Delhi, I used to buy The Hindu from the newsmen and eat it whole.
Recently, I traveled with my wife from Thiruvananthapuram to Palakkad by train. It was an eight-hour journey and I felt as if we reached our destination within eight minutes. Smartphones which have become an essential part of our lives help us to get away from boredom completely. Nowadays no one takes books while traveling.
In the 1990s and 2000s, my mornings would become restless and irritable if the newsmen didn’t bring my copy of The Hindu on time. Today, the newspaper is on my phone, and I can access an exact replica of the print edition at 4 a.m.
WhatsApp and Facebook help us to be aware of everything happening around us. Of course, we have to be extra careful not to get swayed by false and fake news on social media. And yet, we are glued to social media as we are entertained by the interesting video clips, gossips, sensationalism and lack of manners seen in the comment boxes of many FB profiles.
Many videos on social media are often completely misleading. Recently, I saw a video clip in which a man was being slapped and kicked by another man. The video was posted and shared on FB with the caption: “Warehouse owner thrashes a lorry driver for asking for a wage hike.” Those watching the video would definitely believe that what the caption says is true as the man who is thrashed wears a khaki shirt and lungi and the man who is slapped is well dressed.
The next day, I saw in TV news that the video had been wrongly posted and shared. Alam was that the driver of a lorry sexually assaulted a small child and the child ran away from him crying. The child’s father traced the driver and slapped and kicked him. It is very difficult to separate truth from falsehood on social media.
And as social media entertains us without limits, often doctors and drivers forget professional ethics. I have seen bus drivers looking at their smartphones while at work and engrossed in it.
My personal experience is how a doctor addicted to social media robs the patience of his patients. There were a lot of people and my token number was 53. The pain on the left side of my stomach was unbearable. When each patient went in, I felt that he would come out very soon. But each patient took more time than necessary. Finally my turn came and I went inside. I sat in front of him for more than five minutes, but he didn’t even look at me. He was engrossed in sending WhatsApp messages and replying to the received messages. He only took a few minutes to see what my problem was. Out of the 15 minutes I spent in his consulting room, he was engrossed in WhatsApp for more than seven minutes. Then I understood why it took so long for each patient to come out!
The doctor’s WhatsApp addiction reminded me of what Albert Einstein said: “I fear the day when technology will surpass our human relationships. There will be a generation of idiots in the world.
lscvsuku@gmail.com