Ethics Theory, GS 4, TLP-UPSC Mains Answer Writing
What are the effects of social media addiction on Indian youth? Is social media depleting the values of the young generation? Critically examine.
भारतीय युवाओं पर सोशल मीडिया की लत के क्या प्रभाव हैं? क्या सोशल मीडिया युवा पीढ़ी के मूल्यों का ह्रास कर रहा है? समालोचनात्मक जाँच कीजिए।
Approach –
a simple straightforward question where candidates need to write about what are the effects of social media addiction having on Indian youth and is this addiction depleting values of young generation.examine it critically .
Introduction –
Young individuals spend excessive time on these applications with Facebook and Instagram having largest user base in India,with growing dependency on social media it leads to depletion of moral values in youth .
Body-
Social media has become a part and parcel of our day-to-day life. It’s affecting us even without us noticing.
- Many surveys show that social media the impact on their children’s values and moral development and hinder the development of morals and healthy values
- Social media was started with the intent to create a forum to allow people from different social and cultural backgrounds to interact regardless of location and time. But, unfortunately, there’s a lot more negative impact on the youth from social media than positive.
- Youngsters have become so addicted to scrolling infinitely on Instagram, refreshing constantly for new content, checking likes & comments, updating every minute of our lives on social media.
- They get influenced by other people’s posts, their success stories. This might make them feel insecure and dejected. They end up hating their own lives.
- The constant craving for likes, followers, comments, subscribers is really bad, it leads to losing confidence when you don’t get them and why are we constantly looking for someone’s approval or attention.
- Youngsters follow these memes and influence’s and get inspired by them and we start assuming what we are doing is morally right though it is not.
- People act differently online, compared to how they would in real life. Which makes people act in an immoral way while still viewing themselves as a moral person.
- Not least the low level of agreement that social media can enhance or support a young person’s character or moral development.
- Whilst parents acknowledged that positive character strengths, including moral virtues such as love, courage, and kindness, are promoted through social networking sites, they were reluctant to agree that these sites could have a positive impact on their child’s character.”
- We can deduce from the results that parents attitude towards social media is largely negative, 40% of them agree that social media hinders a young person’s character or moral development, they were concerned or extremely concerned about social media having a potentially damaging impact on children.
- Parents who use social media have found that it lacks important positive characteristics for youth such as self-control, humility, and honesty, rather they see a lot of anger and hostility on these social media sites.
- It’s not that we should completely stop social media, rather we should use it for the betterment of our character, we can use it to gain knowledge or even to enjoy some healthy humor.
- There’s a lot of negativity spreading across these social media so don’t get easily influenced by such content.
Benefits of Social Media-
- Social media is allowing the democratization of knowledge and broader communication.
- The rise of the virtual world provides voiceless people unprecedented opportunities to assert themselves and experience a sense of belonging.
- Social Media has also evolved as a tool to counter the hegemony or narrative of traditional players.
- Social Media has also bridged the distance.
- Today Social Media has empowered common people to directly interact with the government and avail government services directly.
Way forward-
- Social media is not going away, so by learning more about this relationship we should be able to maximize the benefits of social media use and avoid the pitfalls
- Exploring the relationship between social media and virtues in more depth, and hopefully offer a more constructive outlook on how social media might impact on a person’s character and moral values.
Conclusion-
Depletion of moral values will have large ramifications on society at large hence big tech firms and everyone must be held accountable for their actions which have wide social ramification.
