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Tsungai Chekerwa-Machokoto
Social media has literally taken the country by storm. Not only Zimbabwe  but the whole globe. An obsession has arisen, not only among young people but also with the elderly as well. Men and women in the midlife crisis and even old people, it seems only a few are immune to the obsession with social media.

What comes to your mind when you hear the term “Social Media?” Perhaps some people are thinking about the media that makes them able to meet and communicate with people around the world.

While others think about that, social media is the channel that gives them the chance to send and receive a variety of information. Others think that social media is about the way we get many updates from people we follow and maybe someone out there thinks social media is a part of a new marketing strategy.

Nowadays, social media seems like a big part of our lives. In fact, it has proven to be such. When your friends didn’t reply to your text, you can greet them on Facebook. When you want to listen to music or see a music video from your favourite singer – go to YouTube. When you just wake up and open your eyes, you don’t have to walk outside to get the newspaper, just take your phone and scroll your Twitter timeline then you’ll get the information. Blogs and Forums are also types of social media because they allow you to share “what you think” about articles, pictures, videos and so on. There is social media which allows the users not only to share about their profession, major of study, works and company, addresses, political views and religion, but also allows them to find a job and allows companies to find employees. Everything seems easier to do with social media.

But from the examples above, I have a question on my mind. If everything seems easier to do with social media, isn’t it strange if society is extremely dependent on social media? How strongly can social media influence and control people’s lives?” This question leads me to think of the recent events that took over the country in different ways. Zimbabwean rapper Desmond “Stunner” Chideme was having marital problems with his wife, Olinda Chapel, who resides in the UK.

She for some reason decided to tell people about it through Facebook. What she didn’t know was that she was telling the world. Hundreds of thousands of people commented on her marital life that was supposed to be private and it spiraled out of control at a very rapid speed. At first, people were sympathetic and then they started attacking her. It was so bad that every social media platform was buzzing with their marital chaos.

In Indonesia, a woman called Prita Mulyasari wrote about her disappointment of the services of a Hospital in Jakarta. She wrote about the hospital and the bad service that she got from the doctors, nurses and administration staff. Then, she sent a message to her friends on the mailing list. Actually, she just tried to remind her friends to be more selective in choosing the hospital and to be more careful in accepting many kinds of services. But, her message became a big problem after her friend shared it to some website.

Her case began in September 2008 when the management of the hospital reported her for the bad news about the hospital she had spread. The management of the hospital demanded a material loss of about Rp.161 million as a replacement for clarification in national newspapers and Rp.100 million for immaterial losses.

She wasn’t only to pay for the hospital losses but she was also detained in May 2009. After eight months, she went through the inspection and verification process and was convicted by the court for violating the law about using Information Communication Technologies in the country.

It is undeniable that social media is powerful. I have a personal friend who had a child with a heart condition. He collected enough money to save his son’s live through social media. So it is clear that there are positives and negatives of social media.

Here are some of the negative effects of social media. Firstly, social media leads to addiction. Spending countless hours on the social sites can divert the focus and attention from a particular task. It lowers the motivational level of people, especially of teenagers and students. They mainly rely on technology and the internet instead of learning the practical knowledge and expertise of everyday life.

Secondly, children can be greatly affected by these social networking sites if they are allowed to use them. The reason is that sometimes people share photos on social media that contain violence and sex, which can damage the behaviour of children and teenagers. It has negative impact on society as children and teenagers involve themselves in crime related activities.

Another downside of social media is that the user shares too much information which may pose a threat to him or her. Even with the tight security settings, your personal information may leak on the social sites.

A false sense of connection is another negative effect of social media. According to Cornell University’s Steven Strogatz, social media sites can make it more difficult for us to distinguish between the meaningful relationships we foster in the real world, and the numerous casual relationships formed through social media. By focusing so much of our time and psychic energy on these less meaningful relationships, our most important connections, he fears, will weaken.

While many businesses use social networking sites to find and communicate with clients, the sites can also prove a great distraction to employees who may show more interest in what their friends are posting than in their work tasks.

Marriages have been eroded by social media. Sometimes not even because one wants to cheat, but because they just got bored and scrolled up and down their contacts list and started chatting.

People have died because of social media. Reputations have died and it becomes immortalised because years after the story is finished, with a simple click on Google, it all comes back and that is catastrophic. Ex-boyfriends engage with their ex’s and before you know it, people are flirting, naked pictures are exchanged and soon they meet to then start sleeping together again. If it wasn’t for social media, it would be too much time consuming to be searching for your ex, well that’s my argument and I stick to it.

The issue of privacy is one of the biggest effects of social media. Social networking sites encourage people to be more public about their personal lives.

Because intimate details of our lives can be posted so easily, users are prone to bypass the filters they might normally employ when talking about their private lives. What’s worse is that the things they post remain available indefinitely. While at one moment a photo of friends doing shots at a party may seem harmless, the image may appear less attractive in the context of an employer doing a background check. While many sites allow their users to control who sees the things they have posted, such limitations are often forgotten, can be difficult to control or don’t work as well as advertised.

The increasing popularity of social sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, social networks has gained attention as the most viable communication choice for the bloggers, article writers and content creators. WhatsApp being arguably the most popular social network in Africa has a huge following.

Almost every living person with a smart phone is on WhatsApp. As long as you have a bit if data, you can get in touch with people even when you don’t have airtime to call because of the ever improving features it is offering. From voice calls, instant messaging and lately, video calls.

Social networking sites have removed all communication and interaction barriers, and now one can communicate his/her perception and thoughts over a variety of topics. Students and experts are able to share and communicate with like-minded people and can ask for the input and opinion on a particular topic.

Another positive impact of social networking sites is to unite people on a huge platform for the achievement of some specific objective. This is very important to bring the positive change in society.

Social networking sites have really taken the world by storm. They however have more negative effects than positive ones in my opinion and therefore need to be used responsibly. We have exposed our children to horror, pornography, terrorism and more through these social media platforms, things we would never let them watch in our presence. Social media has numbed the society’s sensitivity by always exposing us to videos either showing evil, displaying blood and even people being beheaded. The more people get used to seeing blood and horror visions, the less they become sensitive to them. So in actual fact, we can argue that people are being almost fully controlled by what they spend most of their hours watching on social media. It is in our best interest not to repost things that are disturbing and sensitive or even degrading to the next person. That way, we are able to control the impact of social media rather than be controlled by it.

Tsungai Chekerwa-Machokoto can be reached on [email protected]