There has been much debate on the role of social media on our lives. Many people are of the view that social media is harmful to our lifestyle. My take is that the harmful side of social media is real. The harm can be felt in our financial, social, mental, and physical health. More specifically, I find that social media platforms disrupt our human abilities instead of enhancing them. I will focus on TikTok to explain my perspective. Take for instance, the food videos seen on TikTok. An influencer will visit several eateries and film themselves eating delicious foods. The viewer of that video is say a working class citizen who can only afford such food once a month. The impact on the viewer is one a feeling of insufficiency. The person will experience shame for not being able to afford such food. As such, constant viewing of influencers leading luxurious lives, creates negative emotion on viewers who cannot afford such lifestyles. Some may argue that we all deserve such extravagance, to which I would respond by saying that luxury is only for a select few. Society has always comprised of different social classes – those who can afford to visit exotic places at a whim and those who can only dream of them, the rest falling in the continuum. Therefore, constantly creating content to market luxurious lifestyle to everyone will only cause harm.
The other harm caused by TikTok is perpetuating beliefs that defy the sense of community. African societies have always thrived on togetherness. We mourn and celebrate life together. However, TikTok recently attacks that by fuelling discontent between genders and generations. Some of the most popular TikTok content is on the differences between males and females such as how women thrive by staying child-free and husband free. The other is on how Gen-Z generation is different from everyone else. It is important for people to get information on generational and gender differences. However, when all the emphasis is on how different we are from each other then, what about our commonness. How about our togetherness that our success as society depends on? I think we have taken the social media sensations too far.
I am not suggesting that we go back to the stone age, where we didn’t have social media. I think we should just dial it back. Think for ourselves. Trust each other a little more. Look for how we can help each other in the community, how we can help each other get better jobs, eat healthier, heal our ailments and take care of our children. All this fuss about which celebrity is getting a divorce, or how a certain influencer looks is taking away our agency. We are giving away our power which could be used to discuss more pressing issues such as governance and financial empowerment.
# Lifestyle
# Giving Away your Power
# Life stories
