The double-edged sword in cyberspace

A young lady settled down to take a relaxing bath. As she did so, she did what most teenagers do when relaxing. She grabbed her phone to do some texting. After all, she didn’t want to miss out on an opportunity to text her friends and have some online interaction. Like many of her peers, she lived for the significance of her online friendships. However, her phone was plugged in to the mains, and she was electrocuted. For many people addiction to social media is a tragedy of our times. To be sure, this girl in the bath is an extreme example, but social media has become such an addiction that many people find that they cannot stop doing it, no matter where they are. And this has become a real problem in many lives. People cannot concentrate on their jobs, students cannot concentrate on their studies, hours and hours get wasted, and very little is accomplished. But instead of this compulsion, how would we like to be able to live differently? To be more productive at our job or business? To be more productive at home dealing with domestic details? To be able to focus on the job at hand and complete it satisfactorily? In fact, how would we like a new life with more happiness and less anxiety, depression, and loneliness? If we could just manage to do this, then we’d receive all sorts of benefits. We’d be able to relax. We’d know that we had finished what we had to do. We’d also be able to sit back and reflect, to connect our thoughts together, and perhaps come up with new ideas, ideas which we’d never have thought of if we hadn’t taken this time. We’d also be able to grasp new concepts, to learn new things and to grow more, hopefully branching out and being able to remember all the new things we had learned. This could work for all of us, as it has for millions of others who have found better relationships, made more money, and been able to sleep better at night. What’s not to like?