Weekend Arena -The Social Media Is A Double Edged Sword That Cuts Both Ways

The most influencing invention of the twenty-first century will not be mobile technology, but the social media. That is one reality, phenomenon that has twisted not only our interpersonal relationships, but also mobile telephony.

You can draw an inference from what Nokia 3310, the Communicator or even the high-end Thuraya looked like when compared to today’s cheapest of the cheap smartphones. Smartphones keep evolving and every adaptation there has been on them, is to make them social media effective. 

The century will see more of this as it unfolds.

With social media has come an incredible license to air an opinion. From one’s remote corner of the world, perhaps behind shut doors and with a feeling of anonymity, someone could just log on and begin to spew whatever, oblivious of the consequences. The first line of thought is…I dey my house.


Like electricity and every other piece of innovation, the social media is double-edged. There are the good sides and the bad sides. During the Arab Spring, youths from that part of the world deployed the social media to good use and the result was the ousting of some obnoxious leaders.

 In America, the white police officer, Derek Chauvin, who knelt on George Floyd’s neck for over 8 minutes, may have escaped this backlash if his actions were not caught on camera and shared on the social media. Today, the social media has helped us reconnect with lost friends, forgotten classmates, far-flung family members. Most times, we keep pace with our friends by seeing their timelines and understanding what they are up to. 

We rely and judge them based on their activities on the social media that we fail to realise that we have not met physically with him or her for years. The social media helps us gauge his health, her new job, his progress or otherwise, her fashion sense and also his love life. Everything finds its way to the social media. For a lot of people, it is their go-to spot whenever they have any issue. That is why some mothers would come to the social media to ask for suggestions on how to control convulsion in a child, rather than calling their family doctor. 

Some wives have turned some of the groups to their cookery manuals, because they are sure of getting the right recipes for exciting meals. Unconsciously, many of us are hooked on these platforms, spending hours unending there. From comedy to tips, to religion and news, the social media has a remarkable input, doing it the way it suits the poster.

Sometimes the quest to be the first to break the news, or post that picture diminishes our sense of humanity. That is why some people would rather take a photo and share of an accident scene than moving to rescue the victims. Some even get videos of victims struggling during a trauma!


Perhaps, this is the spirit that overwhelms those who break the news of other people’s deaths on the social media without confirmation, like some people did about veteran actor, Uncle Olu Jacobs earlier in the week. It is sad that the quest to air an opinion has turned everyone to a citizen journalist, but without the requisite demeanor, attitude, training and emotions to be one. While the professional journalist by virtue of his training sieves through his news to seek facts and confirmation, the citizen journalist gets it and unleashes it on his or her followers. 

What matters is the number of views or likes and shares. The engagement is the new norm that announces his status. With engagement becoming pricey, so many unconventional ways of getting it has evolved. For some it could come with outright falsehood or blank sensation. That is why they would wake up and ‘kill’ whoever will get them that attention. In the name of creating engaging content, some also go the extra mile by deploying photo-editing skills in a negative manner. Some will superimpose the photo of President Donald Trump on a background of Idumota market and claim he was at the market to buy ankara and some gullible people will believe and share. The mischievous ones go beyond this to sell their skills as influencers to the unscrupulous politicians dominating our space.


They would steal a photo of a street in New York or Berlin and post as the latest road completed in Umuahia or Minna. They have with these actions, ascribed flyovers, hospitals, schools and housing projects to their governors on Facebook when there is actually nothing on the ground. To drive home their point, you would be sure to see someone who would jump on the post to confirm that he used that imaginary flyover or hospital that morning!


These actions, of course, have a lot of adherents. With people like Hushpuppi showing off exotic cars and mansions on the social media, some are copying in a subtle way. 

Once, a social media personality was embarrassed for taking photos of another man’s building and claiming it was hers at Enugu. Even wives who are constantly being battered by their spouses (on account of this) manage to post loved-up photos of their marriages at birthdays. Some have ended up in graves as a result of concealed domestic violence, whitewashed with social media. 

People should learn to copy rightly.

*Very very Interesting writeup!!!

Ngozi the Mgbafor well done oh!!!