Digital World: Curse or Boon?

 

The meet-up began with a question from the host- “Why are we talking about the ‘Digital World’, today?” They then continued to say, “Digital world is the next step: At the beginning our society was paperless, then paper was invented from barks of trees, massive computers replaced the paper from barks, massive computers were then again dominated by hand-held computers and now, we have virtual realities- digital holographic avatars and so on.” While the digital world has eased our life, it has also left damaging effects on society; mentally, socially and environmentally. 

Digitalization of physical practices have made lives convenient in times of chaos, services like healthcare, shopping and more are a click away but, at the same time it has robbed us of “physical touch”. The capacity to meet a doctor face-to-face, the ability to inspect a product by physically touching it; all gone. There is no comfort and sense of security in meeting a medical professional online for physical and mental health issues. The host said, “One gets used to bad diagnosis.” Further, a Vongster added, “Online shopping just doesn’t add to consumerism but also carbon emission due to mass shipping.” Besides health care and shopping, the pandemic marked the era of online education- it sure allowed continuation in education for the student masses but, it also caused distress among them. “Online classes cannot recreate the emotional feeling of being in a classroom”, said a Vongster. 

A discussion about the digital world can never be over without the mention of social media and its overarching effects on a social being. Social media is a space that has been used and abused since its inception. Where voices have the room to be heard on social media platforms, it also has scope to be twisted and choked; where there is room to keep oneself out there, there is also scope for creation of unrealistic beauty standards; where there is room for access to a myriad of commodities, there is also scope for scam and deception; the list is perpetually increasing.

 

Digital World; Curse or Boon? Why don’t you tell me?

 

-By Srija Barman, Vongle, Orion Square.