Disintegration of real life in the reel world, life getting tired in the race of show off

Social media: New addiction, broken relationships and increasing mental stress

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Today's society has come to a turning point where on one hand technological advancement has made life easy and fast, on the other hand, the same technology is slowly and silently hollowing out the social fabric. Social media, which was once a powerful medium of information and contact, has today become an addiction that has seriously affected family, relationships and mental health.

In earlier times, communication meant sitting and talking, laughing, crying, arguing and understanding. Today, all this has been converted into "typing" and "scrolling". Be it children or the elderly, women or men everyone has a smartphone in their hands and their eyes are on the screen. The conversations that used to happen in the kitchen, courtyard or living room are now contained in 'status updates', 'reels' or 'tweets'.

At the speed at which the reach of the internet and the spread of smartphones have increased, our real world is shrinking at the same speed. Social media has changed the definition of relationships now friends are those on whose posts we send hearts, family is those whose messages we have "seen", and happiness and sorrow are what we have shared on "story".

Children are no longer playing games on the playground, but on their mobile screens. Instead of talking to their parents after returning from school, they open Instagram. Adolescence, which was once a time for self-exploration and social experiences, is now caught up in the race for selfies, filters and virtual identities.

This overuse of social media has created a conflict where a person is very busy in appearance but is very lonely from within. Relationships which were once the basis of life have now turned into 'tags' and 'mentions'. Husband and wife live under the same roof, but communication takes place on WhatsApp. Parents serve food to children, and children take pictures of their food before eating and post it.