Another face of 'Social Medias' during lockdown

Lockdown was announced in Nepal on March 24, 2020, undoubtedly people were excited because they had enough time to spend with family, to break their monotonous life, to do things of their passion and more importantly have enough time for insightful thoughts and vision. For a few weeks it was as expected- less to worry and more to learn and enjoy. Any kind of social media was filled with more news of Corona virus in China and Italy than the rest of the countries. Facebook was showered with lots of engagements and trends. The trends like commenting on old pictures, posting lots of memes, lots of Tiktok videos, cooking skills, food recipes, workout videos, dalgona coffee, massive flow of people to their hometowns of course followed by the pictures on their way. This excitement and new enthusiasm wasn’t constant any more to people after 2 weeks or more.

The daily life wasn’t daily anymore, the life wasn’t a usual life, a lot of panics about the deaths, fear of food scarcity and many more, to sum up, the so called’’vacation’’ wasn’t vacation anymore. After weeks and months of lockdown extension, it wasn't a happy holiday, it became boring, people started realizing that being passive and lazy was far more boring than having a hectic schedule. A lot of time with the family wasn’t as exciting as they thought it would be, they looked absolutely dull to look at each other too. Netflix, Youtube and online movies were friends to spend time with (Money Heist, Miracle in cell no.7 etc. were popular) but after a few months watching films  also turned out to be very boring because there was nothing more to watch. The news and the social media flooded with Corona virus news and the deaths of humans like they were unimportant living creatures. Misinformations such as drinking alcohol can immune people to Corona virus spread around the world. With lots of spare time,people were basically having the same schedule of- wake, eat, internet, rest, eat,sleep and repeat. The conversations were short and so were the foods. Formerly, people were learning to cook and prepare food dishes but continuous extensions made them panic whether they will have food till this lockdown will be over. Some feared this might affect Hindu’s biggest festival, Dashain and Tihar, social media scrolling was aching our fingers, videochat was done to everyone, literally everyone so there was no one left to chat. The planet was revolving as usual but the world was halted. Slowly the quarantine period was turning into the devil's zone as it is rightly said, ‘’An empty mind is the devil's workshop’’, lots of negative thoughts were  entering the brain cells. Many people were committing suicides for being bankruptcies, financial crisis, scarcity of food and wages to migrant workers.  Online media news were busy capturing the video of migrant workers going to their native places on foot some of which must be almost 500 km from the capital in belief that they won’t get killed by corona but they would be dead by lack of wages to feed their poor family. After this, online news media and social media were filled with food aids and financial support of some economically stable people, I don’t know whether they actually love social work or was that just to show how generous they are, but let’s take that very positively. I don’t know about other countries but as being close to it, South Asians people were supporting each other and that deserves a huge respect. Celebrities were donating a lot and posting continuously on their social media accounts as well about their humanitarian activities. They often positively influenced people to be optimistic. Social workers were tirelessly working to solve the scarcities and providing help as much as they could including CNN Hero Maggie Doyne to bring the Nepalese people stranded at the border along with the donations, foods, first- aid kits, sanitary pads, soaps etc. Nepalese people scattered all around the world joined hands to donate any amount they could for the people under the poverty line and people depended on daily wages. They proved it was a hard time for everyone but humanity is always above all. The online transactions (E-commerce) became more common as ‘money might spread the virus’ was published in the news. The videos of sanitation methods especially of hand washing were spreading on the internet and global celebrities collaborated. Robots and automatic machines for sanitizing hands were used in some technologically advanced countries. Online deliveries were common. ‘Work from home’ was what WHO continuously encouraged people to do. Virtual events and online classes were the methods used to keep going in some important fields.

 On individual note, the mental health of the people were seriously affected. Questions like, ‘’What I did all my life’’, ‘’Am I going right direction?’’, ‘’What should be my move after lockdown?’’, ‘’How will I pay my loans?’’, ‘’How will people behave after lockdown?’’, ‘’Will people still be social?’’, ‘’Who are my true friends?’’ ‘’Will they change?’’ kept on coming to many people’s thoughts so basically they weren’t doing just physical distancing but they were really doing social distancing. Comparisons with known person’s  lavish life, migrant workers losing job in foreign lands, daily wage workers losing their payment without insurance of their future, seeing oneself doing nothing except some belly fats and jammed joints, expecting people to text to know how they have been doing but finding nobody really cares, being friendly when they need company, adaptations to various chats, webinars, making friendship to play ‘ludo’, young boys and girls texting each other just for time-pass, fear of death, future, people, world everything would create negative energy flow high in everyone’s head.

This is my first time, I don’t have a conclusion about my topic. Social media created people to talk about social issues and exposed the loopholes of the broken system, class gap, inhuman domestic violence, poor mental status on fear, humanity, spirituality, importance of exercise, food as important survival factor, what wild society looked like, importance of financial insurance, developed countries were also not as self-sufficient as they tend to be, scientifically authentic culture was ‘eastern culture’ (for example, practicing, ‘’Namaste’’, ‘self-isolation’, ‘vegetarian food habits’, ‘maintenance of natural harmony’ etc, proper use of ‘social media’ by public figure, ‘dependence of people over Internet ( we all must have said this at least once, ‘’How would I have survived without Internet connection during this abrupt pandemic”. I don’t know whether social media showed compassion or ignorance, ‘survival of the fittest’ or ‘importance of everyone's life’ , ‘ importance of farmers’ or ‘pain of labourers’, but I know it showed something - a reality check.