Dr Chugh highlighted that social media has undoubtedly changed our lives a lot. It has proliferated heavily in our lives as humans are social animals and social media provides a platform for connectivity and relationships.
He started by outlining the value of social media that provides the following key benefits: connectedness with friends and family, instant messaging, alienated loneliness, spreads information quickly and a cheap mode of communication.
The drawbacks of social media include disconnecting relationships, addiction, loss of personal time, insecurity and incompleteness, isolation, privacy risks (identity theft), scams, spreading antisocial and often fake messages, people being busy on their smartphones causing accidents, cyberbullying and a loss of productivity.
Source: Ritesh Chugh
Dr. Chugh also felt the drawbacks of social media appear to outweigh the benefits. Hence, I questioned him about potential solutions to the problem. Some solutions that were suggested include: reclaiming your time by setting some rules, disconnecting at specific times of the day, not checking social media aimlessly, disabling alerts, telling your friends to call you, if urgent and deleting social media apps from your smartphone.
His final thoughts were that users need to really assess whether social media is a curse or blessing for them. He said users should assess their own social media usage behaviour by completing the Bergen’s Facebook Addiction Scale quiz and decide. In his opinion, social media is a blessing, if used appropriately.
