Submit your Article

Social sites have lured our sensation and apparently offered us some tangible blessings to ease our lives. Minus social sites, hardly any second of modern-day life can be imagined. From connecting to kith and kin to fellow friends to sharpening the creativity, social sites are acknowledged boundlessly. However, those much-endeared social sites have shed toxic abuses and irreparable multifold losses on the spectrum of sound social life along with fabric of well-formed faiths. Giving us an inch, those have taken away miles causing us plunge into more than dozens of chronic bottlenecks by fermenting exponential enervation on both the individual and social life of mass users. Pluralities of paradoxes and irony have shaped, rather intoxicated and addicted, the new generation into a deeper sense of dismay and negative note.

The foremost paradox of social sites is that they are causing users to spend and waste huge amounts of time for no reason. Many reports are released and those spotlight the fact that most users hang on sites merely for updates, already known news and sharing personal opinion and ideas which might not generate any productive outcomes into either of individual or social life. Brain rot and doom scrolling have festered the situation. As per statistics of 2024, a person spends an average of 143 minutes per day on social media. However, 40 percent of people—who have at least one social media account—feel they have to check them at least once every three hours to avoid feeling anxious. From grandmother to an eight-year-old kid, all are in virtual communities and racing to swipe the newsfeed every 10 minutes. Such an added sense of addiction and intoxication on social sites, thus, obligates people to waste quality time for not any quality output at all.  

Besides waste of time, a serious decline in the creativity of human beings is one of the horrendous impacts of social sites noticed in the last few years. Students have begun to lose the self-generated answers. ChatGPT and Deepseek have converted all curious learning minds into mere a murmuring machine and mute bystander toward self-built analysis or logics. Academicians often have been defamed for plagiarism. Relying on easily available materials on the single click or on tip of a finger, the human mind has retarded and retired from being creative. Being innovative has been intelligibly blocked in the course of being imitative from social sites.  School children to university graduates across the globe have been reportedly losing self-creativity because of excessive reliance on social sites. Most of them have metamorphosed to mundane copy-paste machines.

Following the waste of time and loss of creativity, excess misinformation, which is called infodemics, has browbeaten and created terror on the public domain. Fake news, scams, scandals and unverified personal assumptions have confused people a lot. Many severely shocking news are also posted that have generated negative worldviews, stigmatized people, relegated people to helplessness, uncovered the sense of only decay and destruction everywhere. Often it has worked as psychodemic and apocalyptic terror too.  

Apart from the aforementioned abuses, substantially alarming is that it has even emerged as a new form of war. Authors Emerson Brooking and PW Singer in their book titled ‘Like War: Weaponization of Social Media’ convincingly draw an analogy between modern war fort and social media. It has been heavily used to underestimate others, extend control and undue leverage, belittle or disparage others’ fame, seduce others’ success, defame rest and destroy the image or strength and so on. Any objection will be posted on social media and that shall be responded with a flow of counter likes and dislikes or even much vituperative remarks and comments. 

Crimes and social disorder, sexual misconducts or activities of extreme unethical tempo cannot be denied as the bane of social sites these days. A harrowing scenario of a ballooning graph of family discord and divorce cases noticed in the recent past in Nepal is mostly generated and commenced on the backdrop of social sites. As per a news report, Kathmandu district court alone has 4,400-plus petitions seeking divorce. The cases of divorce count on top of the list among all writs filed in base or district courts nationally. Social sites have fueled disassociation, conspiracy, unwonted connections too, which has spoiled the rhythm of morality and righteous life in the infatuation of happy life. It has crumbled and crushed the ethics in society.  

As social sites avail all types of contents, it equally assists the people having wrong intention and intending to foil the fabric of disciplined society. A research article titled ‘Anti-social Network; Framing Social Media in Wartime’ (2020) mentions that how to hack the password is one of much searched contents in Google. Such a nature of human or social media users drives society into more antisocial modes and intends to break the society than to make it.

Social sites have even inflicted societies through online robbery and other types of frauds, time and again in the name of prizes, lotteries and other types of funds gone unclaimed or secretly deposited to our names by someone else and so on. Cyber bureau of Nepal Police is reportedly receiving about a couple of dozen such complaints of cheating and other frauds daily.

Excessive digital addiction that is eventually resulting in health hazards and psychodemic symptoms are no less worrisome. Extreme depersonalization is what has seriously taken the nerve of the people. Because of social sites, people hardly have time for themselves and families. Being excessively occupied with gadgets brutally kills time that others friends and family members may be seeking.  

More show-ups and filthy promotions in light of social sites have paralyzed the honest nature of human actions and activities. Demeaning social services for mere fantasy and photo shoots have often doubled the spirit of humiliation and marginalization for the rest. Victims have been unnecessarily exposed to society. Whereas posting the exclusively personal activities like family celebrations and wishes on sites have far deviated and digressed the sites from its real use. Rather than attending seminars, posting a photo of it becomes important; rather than taking tea, posting a shot gets prioritized and appealing to the masses. Filthy promotion of personal activities has cultivated a sense of useless competition in meaningless manners among humans.    

In a nutshell, as of 2024, approximately 5.4bn people use social media and it has risked converting this generation as an ‘e-tribe’, a popular term coined by South Korean academic experts in 2006. Being vastly virtual might have blessed us to have little delights from learning to earning as well but have profoundly paralyzed society and caused it to sail at the trajectory of lethargy, laziness, immorality, health-hazards and many other obnoxiously negative notes.  So, let’s be aware of such unsocial outcomes of social sites before it becomes too late to respond. 

For sometime now, a burgeoning cum ballooning verbal battle between the Mayor of Kathmandu, Balendra Shah alias Balen and the CPN-UML party and its supremo, Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli, has become ghastly aggressive and personally pinpointing as well. After being elected the mayor of Kathmandu, Balen himself humbly visited Oli at Balkot. Maybe that visit was a rightful reflection of respect and earnest veneration to Ba. Handing the tabla, a musical instrument, on behalf of the host to the guest on that day spoke volumes about heaping harmony. But that relation has been ruined almost irrevocably. Ba and Balen are determinedly mired to fire words at each other’s slaughter these days. 

UML MP Rekha Sharma’s case, indication of monetary embezzlement in purported Giribandhu Estate, acrimonious comments on the commencement of new political equation, reprimand in the case of garbage being thrown at the door of the road department, management of slum dwellers, basement parking at Dharahara and many other issues are building the battle on. A few weeks ago, the supporters of both sides campaigned in un-following each other on social media. Of late, Balen’s bold move to penalize UML party committee on the charge of spoiling city sanitation in the pretext of organizing a protest assembly has taken the feud to new heights. These situations have posed many questions for most observant onlookers. In the past, some other unusual and non-ordinary situations had also bewildered this contributor.

Perplexing bewilderment  

Once in the vicinity of Thamel, a taxi was crushed when it hit a person who was walking on the road. This was only a heard incident but not a verified one. But a question arose: was the man strong or the taxi weak? An RCC bridge built over the Dudhkoshi river was destroyed by a breeze, a few years ago (So read the news!). Then another question arose: was the wind strong or the bridge weak? Last year, at a party, a man with a glass of Coca-Cola was seen hypnotizing and commandingly controlling in talking to another man who was drinking whiskey. Another question followed, naturally: was Coca-Cola strong and whiskey weak? After Narendra Modi was elected as the Prime Minister of India for the first time with a comfortable majority, this author himself raised this question at an international conference: did Modi win or did Rahul Gandhi lose?

Now, a similar question has arisen: has Balen become stronger or UML is becoming weaker? Why should an established party, its president and the prime minister of a country wage a verbal war against an independent person or a mayor? Why should he be afraid? Growing immersed in civil service rather than engaging in imbroglios and verbal contretemps on social sites only earnestly indicates political maturity, although social media is an incontrovertibly important tool in current politicking.

After Barack Obama was elected president for the first inning, he thanked the man who invented smartphones through the phone itself because the phone or the social network operated through the very device contributed significantly to his victory. Today’s time is assumed to be the time of 'government in pocket'. Everyone has a tool in their pocket that can update about the government and has the power even to change the government. A book titled ‘Like War: Weaponization of Social Media’ concludes that social networks are the active and prominent political weapons and forts now. The role of social media has been seen to be increasingly important in the leadership formation and Balen’s remarkable rise is a proof of this. A few references may be helpful in juxtaposing the battle of speech between the UML and Balen.

Helpful references

In the last election, the number of seats the UML won in the House of Representatives (HoR) came down a bit compared to the previous election. The number of membership renewals at Mission Grassroots disappointingly and dismally served the campaign. In the election of 2022 compared to 2017, the popular vote also graphed down by more than five lakh. Not a single candidate bagged victory in the first by-election of the HoR. Performance graph charts mere modicum of success in recent local-level by-election. Balen defeated UML’s candidate in the metropolitan election in Kathmandu with a wide margin. Balen brought the UML’s hotspot into heavy havoc and almost an apparent dismissal. 

Balen has around 2.1m followers and Oli has around half a million followers on social media. Has the head of the government and the UML become so weak as to be shivered and quivered with a mayor? Why is the UML, which fought against the aristocratic system, despotic power and authoritarian feudalism in the past, confronting an individual, mere a mayor of a metropolis? Is it not that the UML is becoming pro-regressive in the name of confronting Balen? Isn't the war of words with Balen becoming woeful for Oli?

Leaders who boastfully promised to transform Nepal and make it like Singapore or Switzerland have evidently made it one of the poorest countries in South Asia. A political party should be worried about this and channelize its energies to improve the situation. 

But why does a local level and its chief seem of being as cardinal count and as an arch nemesis? Has Balen, an individual, become equally strong to UML or a national party, the government leading power of the country, equal to the head of the government? Or has the UML debilitated to the level of one person, one local level? Time demands a merciless review and engagingly anchored analysis.

If UML has not made any mistake, has no shortcomings and has nothing to do with some of the allegations coming from Balen, then it ought to focus on main issues of the country. If the entire party has to be shaken and upset because of Balen, when will the UML find time to deal with burning issue facing the country? The uncommon situation of the PM against a mayor and entire party against just an individual has created a solid mountain of immense doubt. Is it that the UML has its confidence crashed? Does it have a moral deficit, has it lost self-esteem or juggernaut fear has arisen in its folds as citizens have started to trust others?

This contributor is never in the favor of either Balen or Oli or any party, he does not want disagreement and disharmony between them to swell ahead. He is aware that mutual arrogance and pride can cause another conflict in the country. Both Balen and Ba should not be word warriors against each other; they ought to be dedicated and devoted in the service of the citizens within their jurisdictions.