Various applications, simple and complicated, of social media, have been changing our way of life now. Following smart and android inroads in telephony appliances, users have been attracted to benefit from this new technology nearly in most walks of life. The end-user is no longer a traditional monologic receiver of one media source at a time, be it a TV, Radio, newspaper or audio-video provider. He or she has been a receiver of an unlimited number of sources giving an endless wealth of information, in what is termed as dialogic transmissions. By dent of these interactive usages, sharing/exchange of information, ideas, different forms of expression and creativity have become virtually available.
In my last sentence above, you notice the adverb word “virtually”. This is a keyword that can lead a researcher in this field to its cons. Here there is obviously a number of disadvantages, some are even threatening users, which, inter alia, are as follows:
- Loosing sense of vibrant and direct contact with others. This is noticeable, to a large degree,in family members with each of them, though setting in their living room, being immersed in his / her own remote world.
- Exposing, intentionally or non-intentionally, private family matters.
- Limiting time for recreative performances such as sports, and for direct social contacts such as mutual visits.
- For students, laziness or even cancelling due homework.
- Contributing to baseless or fabricated information.
- Blackmailing others.
But if the above cons are to be resisted or prevented, what should we do?
The remedy, basically, lies in two important social institutions: the
family parents and school. Through early planned orientation and
rationing of usages, can most or all ills be averted. The planned orientation however must be robustly taking the shape of guidance of good characters and moral values.
Mohamed Amin Tewfik