As I was saying …

THERE was a time when all aspects of human contact were governed by certain rules, some spoken and some unspoken. Even when writing a letter and posting it, there were certain rules one had to conform to.

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I don’t know whether people still write letters to each other, but when you write a letter, you are expected to follow rules that have to do with writing a letter, like where to write the recipient’s address and where to fix the stamp. Courtesy is also important as it shows the tone of your letter.

I can give many other examples, but my point is that at this age of people using social media to make contact, all rules and courtesy have been discarded. Instead of writing letters and licking stamps, we send each other instant messages on WhatsApp, Facebook, and on other platforms, and that’s where the problem starts.

Social media is a free-for-all and doesn’t come with any universal rules. You also don’t have to be nice to people. There are people who truly believe that if they have your cellphone number, they somehow own you and your time, and they have the right to send you messages at all hours of the day and night. After that message has been sent, you have to respond to it within the time frame that the sender has set in their heads. Even total strangers do that.

I have lost count of the times I have been woken up by my phone ringing in the middle of the night to be rudely asked, “I sent you a WhatsApp message 30 minutes ago – why are you not responding?”
Why am I not responding? Because I’m not a troll – I’m a normal person – and normal people sleep at night.
The problem with social media is that everything happened so quickly, and there was no time to set any rules on how it should be used.

Facebook only started in 2005, and for many years, it was a young people’s thing before grown-ups of all ages realised what a useful tool it was. By then it was too late to draw up any courtesy protocols.
I’m not at all saying that social media is bad because it has helped me reconnect with people that I would otherwise never have been able to get in touch with. But like my friend once said, I can’t wait for the day this internet fad is over so we can go back to using landlines, fax, and dial-up like God intended.

DID YOU KNOW?

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