Social media is dead to me

It has been a couple of years since I last saw what my friends were up to on Facebook I lost interest after a point because it had started to seem as if they were constantly doing things I wasnt Some were checking into fancy restaurants with startling regularity others seemed to be permanently on holiday and I couldnt keep up with having to like their posts all the time especially when I was doing the liking from behind a desk at workThousands of people have deleted their accounts since not all of them for the same reasons that drove me away There have now been all kinds of seamy stories about what happens behind the scenes at FacebookThere have been reports of the theft and misuse of data for instance coupled with the manipulation that comes into play with targeted advertising There have been serious accusations of the social media giants uncontrolled flow of propaganda that has had serious repercussions on elections and the democratic process in countries around the worldI may have quit Facebook because the photographs of babies and cats started to push me over the edge but two years since that decision Im glad I deactivated when I didThere have been other platforms that have since lost their sheen pushing users away faster than they once attracted them I deleted and uninstalled Instagram Snapchat and eventually Twitter because everything they promised to change was ignored What made it worse was how each of them was hijacked by groups bent on flooding all online networks with hate often paid by governments to do so because divided communities have always been easier to ruleNo one likes warnings especially if they involve things that give us pleasure however fleeting A little over a year ago the UKs Royal Society for Public Health and the Young Health Movement published a worrying report on the impact of social media platforms on mental health It found some positive factors of course because its hard to deny the possibilities of anything involving millions of people using something at the same timeAwareness understanding and the opportunities for selfexpression were all cited but so was the Fear Of Missing Out that prompted depression and anxiety exacerbated loneliness affected sleep patterns and body imageBy the time I uninstalled Twitter I had been pushed into it by a series of temporary suspensions all triggered by concerted efforts to kill dissent The platforms policies would have been laughable if they werent so deeply troubling and you are urged to seek out any outspoken woman in India for proofThis is a platform that has no problem when women are threatened with rape which happens more often than you think in a country where sexual repression and a culture of misogyny have long worked together to create a toxic cocktail Threats of violence are okay too and tweets that incite murder are often gently rebukedIt says a lot when scientists the world over start to spend more and more time trying to figure out how to rid social media platforms of hate speechA couple of months ago the journal Nature published a paper by a professor of physics titled Hidden resilience and adaptive dynamics of the global online hate ecology on how banning hate groups doesnt necessarily stop them It advocated a fourstep approach that took into account the resilience and global interconnectedness of these hate clusters but whether the approach will accomplish what it aims to is anyones guessSocial media platforms and their algorithms operate in secrecy which makes it impossible to evaluate whether any of these measures can or ever will workSome believe quitting is not the solution because it enables those who hijack these platforms to operate with even more impunity I have found myself in a calmer state since I logged off though not because I actively engaged with so much of the content that crossed my timelines but because I simply wasnt bombarded with information be it personal or politicalAs time goes by I fear the notion of missing out less I dont want to miss the things that matter and I increasingly believe these things are in my immediate vicinity involving family and friends who interact with me offlineWhat happens online may be great but I am no longer as interested as I once used to be If this means I am simply getting old I can live with thatWhen he isnt ranting about all things Mumbai Lindsay Pereira can be almost sweet He tweets lindsaypereira Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individuals and dont represent those of the paperCatch up on all the latest Crime National International and Hatke news here Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updates