Digital Media – Boon or Bane?

Digital media has been lauded as a stepping stone in human interaction, connectivity, knowledge, and research. 

 Since the advent of the Internet, it has brought about countless new possibilities in our everyday life. For instance, social media platforms. Can one imagine how different our lives would be without sites like Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat? 

Personally, my daily source of “entertainment” comes from Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. I use Facebook to watch videos and posts of people travelling, cooking, eating, and even to keep up to date on current affairs. On YouTube, I am able to watch videos of my favourite content creators on lifestyle, fashion, beauty and travelling. On Instagram, I am able to keep up with my friends’ lives – especially for friends who live in another country, social media has made it so easy to keep in contact with one another with just a username.  

However, have we actually stopped to think about the potential dangers that digital media may bring about?

Digital media can bring about multiple threats to our daily lives. Even on a seemingly harmless platform like Instagram, there are cases of people’s accounts getting hacked everyday. That aside, it also has extremely dangerous psychological effects. Instagram encourages the portrayal of an almost false reality and promotes narcissism – this has even led to the increase of depression and suicide rates all over the world.

In lieu of the above, can digital media then be considered to be a blessing in our lives? Well, my personal opinion is that if you don’t allow it to consume your lives, digital media can actually be a wonderful tool to exist (I cannot even begin to imagine how I would survive without applications like Google Maps, for one).