Imagine this: You wake up on a lazy Sunday morning and grab your phone to check Instagram messages. As you unlock your phone and swipe through the apps, you find out that the Instagram app has been uninstalled from your device.
Despite knowing the fact that it isn’t you who uninstalled it, you somehow convince yourself of some trivial reasons—like, you accidentally uninstalling it. Now, you are trying to locate Twitter app.
To your surprise, you couldn’t find even twitter either.
Bang!
You rub your eyes in absolute shock, and continue to check for other social media apps in your phone. You couldn’t find any such apps. Not even a single one.
Even the native social media apps that come pre-installed in most phones, is no more in your mobile.
You come to a conclusion that all the apps must have disappeared from your device because of some crash. So, to confirm your assumption, you enter your query on Google search tab: “Why Instagram crashed?”
You were routed to a totally different page on Google, that shows images of plane and car crashes. After trying out multiple search queries, only to no avail, you finally type in the word “Instagram,” and click the search icon.
Guess what? A company as such does not exist on the internet. You couldn’t believe your eyes.
In fact, even Wikipedia has no records of it. Not only Instagram, but no social media apps’ records are found on the whole internet.
Startled by what you have just seen, you call your best friend to ask if she experiences the same issue. She responds saying that she has never heard of the term social media, or anything like Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, among others, in her life. All your other friends, relatives, and acquaintances say the same thing.
You couldn’t understand what on earth is happening to you. For a moment, you even doubt if you have time travelled to the past.
As you are pondering about this confusion of your life deeply, you feel someone tapping your shoulder from behind. You turn around to see if it was your little brother. But none were present behind you.
You are horrified. Literally, you could feel the breath on your neck.
And, for the second time you feel the tap on your shoulder again—this time a little harder, along with a voice saying, “Dey enchiru da, kadaiku poi paal packet vaangitu vaa. Time aachu!” (Hey, wake up! Get the milk bottle from the store, it’s time!)
Yes, it is your Mom’s Voice.
You breathe a big sigh of relief, after realizing that it was just a dream. Yet, it makes you wonder as to how would the world look like without Social media—both the negative and positive impacts of Social media, with and without its existence.
You open up your journal to start writing down what you have in your mind.
Speaking of which, our next blog post is going to be just all about that: How Social Media Affects Your Life.