2
0
Lately, people are raising awareness about ongoing world issues through posts and stories on various social media platforms. There are several Instagram features and stickers that individuals use to spread their viewpoints; are those working and helping society?
Let me give you an example of a feature – donations. Instagram introduced a feature of live donating in 2020, where you could donate to a crisis just by sharing an Instagram sticker on your story. Useful, isn’t it? But this is being duplicated and used to most presumably waste people’s time. Think it yourself, can you really raise money by following and posting unknown accounts? Here, I am trying to prove how accessible social media and its segments have become.
Anyways.
Instagram has evolved politically unrestrained, which indeed is a good thing. It ensures that people are well informed about their surroundings and stay up to date. However, a coin always has two sides. When there exist some trusted accounts like the BBC, NYT, and the UN, there also exist some accounts that provide biased and one-dimensional information. And subsequently, their target audience is youth, the future of society.
For instance, let’s take the issue of the hijab ban in India. The High Court of Karnataka enforced a law called the Uniform Civil Code (UCC), restricting people to wear anything religious beyond their uniform. I came across many posts and stories sketching how all other religions but Muslims were exempted from the UCC. They displayed how Sikhs could wear pagris (turbans), Hindus could wrap saffron scarfs, but Muslims couldn’t wear hijab.
Those posts disturbed me. The way India was turning its secularism down was bothering me. I started despising the government. I couldn’t help but research. After understanding the scenario, I realized that those illustrations showed just one side of the story. Those posts were ‘BIASED,’ in the sense that they only pictured the false perspective of the minority Muslim population. The truth was that all religious clothing and accessories were banned in an educational institute, including pagris and saffron scarfs.
I don’t say that the implemented law was fair, however, I was shown only one incorrect side of the story which forced me to think and see in a certain, restricted manner. After this, I completely agree with a quote by George Washington – “When one side of a story is heard and often repeated, the human mind becomes impressed with it insensibly.” Let’s all not limit our thinking and perspectives based on what we read on Instagram and know that there can be different sides to the same story.
