No to WhatsApp!

by Priyanka Chauhan

I have been always quite against the excessive usage of social media in whichever form, mode or medium. I remember having seconds thoughts about downloading WhatsApp in 2014, two years back. For someone who always guarded privacy, this was a big step.

The buzz around that time was ‘Are you on WhatsApp’? Almost every person I knew would ask me this question. Not using this service meant social boycott by friends and netizens. My friends cajoled me to be on WhatsApp, just as I was pushed by my friends to join Orkut in 2005 when its popularity faded, came the New Age communication king Facebook.

After much dilly-dallying, I installed WhatsApp. I have never had a moment of respite since this demon came into my life. My phone is a victim of amnesia. It doesn’t know the serenity of  a blank screen without any pending messages. I am robbed of the joy which my phone and I enjoyed earlier which left me a soothing feeling.

My phone forever on notification mode of messages from people, who better rest just as   ‘Contacts’ in my phone directory. I don’t care what joke, however funny it may be, barging into my space when I am reading, eating, or sleeping.

In hindsight, I noticed my mind got trained to check  WhatsApp messages every five minutes, even in the middle of night. Morning rituals, too, gradually shifted from silent prayers to sending ‘Good Morning’ messages embellished with emoticans of bouquets and flowers to people, friends group who would still be my friends if I did not waste precious ten minutes right at the start of my day. That time is sacred. Then, a couple of times more to check back if they replied. What was the purpose of such greetings? Can it ever replace the warmth of greeting someone face-to-face ot to say the least calling up that person. I became like this because I let the technology unmeasured.

Throughout the day, I will look at least hundred times to even insignificant messages and would also read them instead of thinking my original thoughts. Also would invest time in first checking the display picture and reading the status followed by random thoughts on what I was looking at.  That would account to voila! hours of wastage, if I were to do the Maths.

Not only this, the primary purpose to facilitate communication. Here, I realised too much was happening, mostly meaningless. The chat thread got longer and longer from whats up to what you ate,  devoid of any heart-to heart-communication. In fact, frequency of calls from friends came down as it became a matter of great convenience to drop a’hi’ and ‘bye’. I hardly receive calls from my close friends. They just communicate via this evil App.

I have had so much negativity flowing out through this messanger that I wish I had stopped it much earlier. A message from a friend would go on to become an endless chat with inconclusive matter ripped open like a wound. Precious time, mental peace, would be the immediate casualties. Be in queue, at workplace, home or anywhere on this earth, I will click onto the Green colour monstrous App.