The arrival of social media improved a lot of things in the world and communication seems to be the core of them all. I still clearly remembered what the world looks like without social media, the impacts of these instant messaging apps can't be underestimated.
Then, I and mom usually spend about two hours to and fro just making Internet calls. She got a Nokia 5210 at a time but making calls was quite still expensive. Internet-enabled phones started circulating in Nigeria and we got access to some social media platforms. We graduated from Java to Andriod which took things completely to the next level for social media and the things we spend hours on back then can be achieved in less than a minute.
Being able to reach out to the world from the comfort of your room has been made possible by the power of social media.
Is there anything greater than that?
Don't mind me, there are indeed great inventions out there but you can't just take social media away from the people anymore.
It has given a lot of people voices, it has helped bring quite a lot of dreams to reality and you just can tell how great it is. There was a particular time Twitter was banned in Nigeria after the October 10 incident in 2020 where lots of youth lost their lives while trying to speak about the inconvenience the nation was going through as a whole.
The announcement of the ban created chaos and when the real chaos started when the ban was implemented. It wasn't as difficult as we thought, we searched for other ways to access Twitter and VPN did the magic.
Social Media is something that can't be taken away from people because of how much it makes life easier for us.
Among the features of Social Media is chatting, this is practically what most people use their devices for and it's really cool.
I don't chat a lot but I barely make calls these days because most of the people I communicate with from time to time all use smartphones and we can just chat when we need to communicate with each other. I prefer chatting a lot because of how it made the recovery of information easy, I might forget details of things said through a call but chatting will keep every information intact as long as you want. I also do not like to talk too much because my phone is completely useless for that period while making calls but I can chat and do other things at the same time.
Chatting is done quite a lot of things for me and the biggest of them is how it helps me to keep in touch with people. I have mentioned quite a few times how terrible my social life can be but chatting doesn't make me completely a weirdo.
I hardly make phone calls except it is very important, the only person I speak to through call every day is my mom. She wants to hear voices and not just messages.
There are days I just check my chat list and reach out to people who I haven't spoken to in a while.
Chatting doesn't just keep a tight list of my interaction, it also helps me stay in touch with people who still love me for who I am.
Everything about technology has its disadvantages and chatting on social media is not exempted.
My relationship paid the price of chatting because I became so obsessed with only chatting with my lover and it was so bad that even though she calls, I barely talk for a minute before requesting that we chat.
We took our fight there, we became obsessed with it and all our lives were on it except for the fact that I don't like posting my pictures.
The obsession with social media as our only medium of communication was addicting and we barely talk when seeing each other but there is always something to talk about when online.
It wasn't a thing without control, we worked towards it was a success.
Even though we were going to chat, we at least make calls to discuss important issues, settle disputes, and others.