Faieez Sohail Social Media: How Useful, How Harmful?

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1357  words 

سوشل میڈیا کا استعمال: کتنا مفید، کتنا مضر

Use of Social Media: How Useful, How Harmful? 

 Faieez Sohail

BS Part III  2k18/MC/45 

Urdu to English Translation

With each passing day social media is garnering importance in our daily life where millions of people are attached among each other for news and information. Twitter and Facebook are the most popular websites of this era with millions of subscribers in the entire world.

According to Erik Qualman's book 'Socialnomics', one in every five relations is made because of internet and reason for many relations is also said to be social media.

If the amount of people on Facebook would be compared according to that of a country, it would be equivalent to the third biggest country in the world in terms of population and dominates the social media web, whereas, the number of Twitter followers of Justin Bieber. Katy Perry and Lady Gaga would surpass the population of Germany, Turkey, South Africa, Argentina, Egypt and Canada.

Any topic can be discussed on social media and people belonging to any and every race and culture can find people according to their liking with whom many times relations end up in real life relations.

However, people talking on social media should keep the fact in mind that they can be held accountable for whatever they say or write and if anyone have doubts about it they should refer to the case of Lalit Modi vs. Chris Cairns where Lalit Modi wound up paying a fine of more than £90,000.

One important thing is that Facebook and Twitter are both interconnected and if you tweet something on Twitter so Facebook provides a facility to share it on your own Facebook profile. Many people are unaware what is tweet or what is comment or how to share something.

Guru Srinivasan is telling how to use social media and what it should be used for.

What we interpret as common sense in real life, it is the same on Facebook and Twitter. "Don't post excessively on Facebook and Twitter, don't put all your time in it and even if you do, refrain from exhibiting it. Things written  on Twitter remain there always or for a prolonged period of time and there is a risk of real harm from it.

This is the advice of Sri Srinivasan who is a graduate from Columbia University's School of Journalism. He is the Dean and also teaches Digital Media programs as a professor. News Weekly magazine also named Srinivasan as one of the five most influential South Asians in United States of America and top 100 Twitterati in the education sector. He is one of the 22 professors (http://www.facebook.com/sreetip). The total on his Facebook is more than 4000. He shares many new technologies on his Twitter along with information and passages. In an interview with "Spain" Sri Srinivasan said, 'Social media can be used as a safe platform to get your ideas across instead of writing "What did you had in lunch?" Social Media should not be used for posting stupid things and playing games. It is a source of communication and forming long term relationships so that when someone sees your profile, it leaves a good impression on others rather than thinking you spend most of your time uselessly.

Srinivasan answered a few questions of such a group of students from Delhi schools in American Center among which many were ignoring requests of their parents to become friends on Facebook or were in contact with the responsibles of voluntary organizations and were telling them how they could use social media for their own benefit. While answering these questions, Srinivasan said, "My mission in life to destroy social media for people and tell them to use this media together with a better strategy and purpose rather than finding sheeps of FarmVille and playing Tetris Beatles.

Ankita Lath, a student from Bangalore, wrote on Srinivasan's Facebook page, "You really have destroyed the element of spending time through social interactions but you also gave a new angle to analyze it. Now we have understood the importance of being there and staying in touch with people."

A student from Amity International School, Shonak Banerjee, also expressed similer views. In an interview on E-mail, Banerjee said, "He introduced me to an entirely new and constructive way to look a social media. Social media is not about liking, commenting and updating statuses, it's way ahead of that.

Anjun Singhal, CEO of a website that provides online media facilities for non-profit and educational institutions said, " Social media has great potential for commercial, professional and personal branding." He said, "If we can make the quality of the content better and stay in touch with our audience through better understanding of this system, it can turn into a biological system and be utilized as a methods for correspondence, training and administration.

Sagrika Bose, Vice President of programs at the NASSCOM Foundation in New Delhi thinks that the words of Srinivasan was were informative for the volunteer organizations under their network. Sagrika Bose's organization works with and uses the tools of social media in order to raise awareness on topics such as volunteering. Sagrika said, " What I personally like in Srinivasan's sayings is that he emphasizes on "Sustainable Social Media" This is important because non-profit organizations have limited resources and therefore in order to effective it is necessary fr them to start small, pay all their attention to the task at hand and work out a clear plan of action.

In this season, thousands of Indian students are arriving at American colleges for education and keeping this fact in mind, Srinivasan emphasized on this that to be frequently in contact with their families back in their own country, social media must be used and America should also connect through it. He said, "Many Indian students stay in their shells. My wish is for them to increase their interactions with other people."

In Mumbai, Naintara Kelachand, the key editor and founder also joined in on the conversation with Sirnivasan. He said, "In a large part of the world, in a way social networking has become a means of communications and it's your own loss if you don't recogniz  e it's potential.

Srinivasan spoke about the evolution of different new media platforms in Calcutta, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore, Indore, Jamshedpur and Trivandrum. All of these meetings were arranged by the American embassy in June. While taking to social media users in New Delhi he said that that the kind of enthusiasm Google+ has created in amazing because a few months ago no one would have thought that this could be possible.

He said, "The way the youth of India is using social media, according to him, is no different than how the rest of the world is using it and in this scenario the appearance of Google+ is very fascinating. Google+ has come out out almost all together in the entire world. Facebook's case was different. First the people of Harvard used it, then the people of Columbia. It was a slow process but here it is emerging immediately. Therefore, it is very much possible for such people to be present in this very room who can tell us what to do with Google+."

Former Professor and Dean of Assam University Debashis Chakrabarti, who attended Srinivasan's talk in Calcutta said that though there aren't many users of Google+ yet but due to it's specific and attractive features such as multiple video chats, circles, etc, there is all the possibility of it's great success.

Sagrika Bose of the NASSCOM Foundation added to that conversation that it is too early to comment on the future of Google+. "Although the pace at which people have accepted Google+ is really examplary but Google will have to work hard to maintain this pace.

Srinivasan says, "To do any task at the word of a teacher or boss has it's own significance because these are the people who determine your success in life. To avoid delay is also important. You should also learn the skill of using time wisely while being on Facebook and Twitter. One thing you should keep in mind the social media can not solve your problems for you."