SOCIAL MEDIA IS A REFLECTION OF SOCIETY!

The advent of Social Media has really changed how people relate with each other and has some how done away with antiquated ways of communication and how people relate with each other. Such an advancement has brought with it the good and  the bad. It has meant someone in South Africa can easily communicate with someone in Brazil,Nigeria or China at almost no cost. Social media platforms such as X formerly Twitter,Facebook,YouTube and even WhatsApp are at the forefront of this revolutionary in the means of communication and connecting the world. I for one belong to a WhatsApp group named the Che Guevara Internationalist Brigade which consist of participants from South Africa, Zambia, Ghana, Haiti, Venezuela,United States of America just to name a few. These are the people I met back in 2019 when we gathered in the city of Caracas in Venezuela for the Che Guevara Internationalist Brigades and the International Peoples Assembly. In this WhatsApp group we get to share experiences and the struggles each of us are confronted with in our respective countries,and ideas on how to respond to such struggles.

As already mentioned in the previous paragraph the advent of Social Media has brought the good and the bad.The positives spinoffs are that over the years we have seen how the social media has been used to educate and inform people, it has made the sharing of information quite easy. We have also witnessed how social media has been used as a vehicle to mobilize support and resources for the needy and those confronted by tragedies such as wars,floods,ect . The monotonous way of communications have been left behind, and as such the world has been made small.Some have managed to to capitalize on the power of the social media in advancing their business adventures or interests ans this way has proven to much cheaper compared to the traditional way of marketing.

The presence of Social Media has proven to be an Amplifier or a mirror of our society. It is on these social media platforms where one comes across all sorts of people from different backgrounds and convictions. You don't have to look further than Twitter and Facebook to understand the point I am making,it is mainly on these two platforms whereby you will come across people misbehaving and being mean to others, even worse bullying other users. They will then claim to be joking and will say the following "We are here on Facebook/ Twitter for jokes, so it is not our problem if you are too serious", however, we all know that such people are actually not joking but are too much of cowards to express these views they conceal as "jokes". It is because they know their backward and bullying tendencies cannot stand the test of rationality , so to evade the task of having to defend their views and ways of doing things, they hide behind the "social media is for jokes mantra". All that Social media has done is to shine the spotlight on the practices that are sometimes hidden, we should not claim to be surprised when such things are brought to the limelight.

People ought to understand the power contained by the social media, it can be a force for good or evil. We must discourage the intellectual laziness or the passive attitude of treating the social media as a playful tool. Social Media has similar power and impact to influence the direction of society the similar way Religion, Education and Mainstream media has. We must choose the positive path of deploying social media for the advancement of humanity not for the decaying of humanity.

By 

Teboho Sekhosana

0844361494

sekhosanateboho9@gmail.com