During my younger days, personal
bonding among the family members and other relatives was much stronger, I
believe. The family members used to take breakfast, dinner etc together and
many things used to be discussed over the food, which used to be happy
occasions too. Birthdays or anniversaries used to be pleasant occasions where
everybody greeted the person (s) celebrating personally. Husband and wife,
parents and children, siblings all had personal bonding among each other.
However, the scenario slowly
changed with the advent of satellite televisions, mobile phones and the social
media. Even though television made its presence in late seventies, it used to
take limited time of the viewers, where all at home together watched the
programme which was available for a limited time only. Earlier to that though
All India Radio was present, it largely being an audio medium never used to
steal the family time.
With the advent of satellite
Televisions and multiplicity of visual media, be it news channels or
entertainment channels, there started a cut throat competition among them to
retain the TRP rating. With this in mind they started churning out “Breaking
News” on news channels and other soap operas in entertainment channels. Even
without verifying the veracity of the “Breaking News” the news hungry
population started getting addicted to these channels and their panel
discussions, which many often turns out to be much ado about nothing!.
Similarly the soap operas started affecting the routine of those who started
watching them, by adjusting their chores as per the timings of these serials.
(Of course, I remember in the days of Doordarshan only when “Mahabharat” used
to attract huge viewership, any function on Sundays used to be timed after the
telecast of this serial was over and at some places of celebration they had
made arrangements for telecasting the serial on large screens with due
publicity, so that the invitees will be in their seats even before the function
started to view the serial!)
After the AV revolution, there
came the internet, social media and the smart phones!!! Though all these have
helped the human race in a large way, the bad effects of these should be seen
to be believed. Now everybody who is having some earnings possesses a Smartphone
and accessing face book and Whatsapp has become a daily chore like. It has gone
to such an extent that it seems something untoward will happen if a person did
not browse to access his mails or posted his latest status in FB instantly. So
now even if somebody visits you at home, the host as well as the guests will be
grossly immersed with their smart phones and hardly any conversation takes
place. If it is the time for any popular serial, in between they watch that
too, without much talk.
And the use of FB has gone to
such an extent that now- a -days even the husband and wife , who normally share
at least the bed rooms, wish each other on birthdays and anniversaries through
FB!
And talking about the smart
phones, you can see everybody playing with their proud possessions, wherever
they are, be it at a bus stop, in the office, walking on the road and even in
meeting rooms!! Since everybody in the meeting room right from the person
presiding over the function will be engaged in this, nobody takes objection to
such attitude in the meetings too…
There are some casualties also in
this Smartphone and FB activity. Many unverified statements fly around through
these media as everybody shares whatever they receive over these platforms
without verifying the veracity of what has been received. There is a danger of
spreading false information/rumours also through these media because of this.
And we also read about spreading the morphed images of persons through these
media thereby defaming the persons affected. And thinking that brevity is the
beauty of the message, these people use their own language killing the English
language to save time in typing the message. Thus “the” becomes “d”, “forget”
becomes “4get” “together” becomes
“2gether” etc.
While I fully agree that the
technological advantages should be fully taken benefit of, I am of the opinion
that this should not be at the cost of our family and social life. Let us
reinvent the personal values and personal bonding which will go a long way in
the social life, even if it means sacrificing some time we spent on the TV and
social media.
No comments:
Post a Comment