Every new year means new resolutions. We’ve been doing it all our lives. From going vegan to spending wisely, we make all sorts of resolutions. Today, digital media has become a major part of our lifestyle. While most people share an unhealthy relationship with the digital space, some are still getting used to it. This year, make a resolution dedicated to the digital world. Whatever is your relationship with technology at the moment, it sure can be made better.
Smoking is a bad habit, and so is not being able to withdraw your eyes from your mobile phone and laptop when there’s a need to do that. So, if you think your engagement with social media is refraining you from escaping the data-centric life, feel free to pause for a while.
Some, like 24-year-old Aditya Roy, an IIM Ranchi student, wish to be a little more constructive with their internet usage in 2019. “This year, my resolution is to spend less time on Facebook and spend some quality time on Quora,” adds Roy.
Social media is not always unproductive. There is a plethora of things that you can do. Have a passion for an art? Then make a resolution like 25-year-old iOS app developer Arun Kulkarni. He says, “I’d like to follow my hobby of travelling and sketching and spread it across all my social media handles to make my feed spread good vibes.”
While some take social media a bit lightly, some like 28-year-old Chaitanya Shinkhede, a Research Scholar from Tilak Maharashtra Vidyapeeth Pune, wishes to learn a bit more about it. “I want to develop the ability to recognise ‘clickbaits’ which is a severe threat to digital platforms. It is a blatant manipulation of the audience, just for the sake of crass commercialism, demeaning the trust of netizens and promoting fraudulent practices like click farming. Also, I would like to study more about data journalism next year, an emerging field with a perfect confluence of technology and investigative quantitative data,” says Shinkhede.
How many of us have been on the never-ending journey of deactivating and activating our social media accounts? Most, I believe! Sahib Srivastava, 24, a video editor by profession, admits being guilty of the same. His New Year resolution is to close his Facebook account; ‘Permanently’, this time. “The desire has been on my mind for a long time now. I’ve even deactivated the account several times. However, I always came back to reactivate it. I bet Facebook knows checking in for gossip is irresistible. FYI, the Internet tracks all of us. So it is better to keep a safe distance,” says Srivastava.
Netflix has been a saviour for some after a tired day at work. Most users either watch a film to get away from the plain old day or put something on download before crashing. Neha Sharma, 22, a student at ISM Dhanbad, would however like to do a tad bit more. She says, “Apart from indulging in a lot of Netflix and Amazon Prime, this year I also wish to create a few short films/spoofs of the plays that we have performed in college in the past and curate them online.”
Web series have been trending for quite sometime now. No wonder, it is a good source of income, too. Jobanpreet Singh Deol (23), a student at XLRI Jamshedpur says, “I have a habit of binge watching TV series like many others on platforms such as Netflix, YouTube, etc. In 2019, I plan on creating content for the netizens by producing a digital web series maybe.’
There is so much more on the internet apart from Facebook, YouTube, Whatsapp, TicToc and Instagram. Twentythree-year-old Srikar Chiluveru, a mechanical engineer at RIL Ltd tells us how there are applications out there which we can actually learn from. He says, “I am a techie, so this year, I’d like to switch it to an app called Curiosity from Instagram, just like I did from Facebook to Instagram last year.’ Curiosity is one such app built with the intent of making learning easier for the users.”
Most of us are quite familiar with ‘doodle’, but how many of us have actually tried it out? Sampada Salimath, a 25-year-old Android Developer from Bengaluru, says, “My resolution for 2019 will be doodling a bit more. I also take interest in blogging but never attempted to do it myself. This year, I most definitely will.”
With hoax news being all over the place, it is undoubtedly very important to check the sources of any news article. Agreeing to the same, 22-year-old software engineer Abhishek Roy says, “Twitter is something I’ve always been very fond of but many a times, on Twitter, fake news spreads like forest fire. If there’s anything I would resolve to do this year onwards, it is to check for legit sources before blatantly engaging in and spreading the same.’
While most wish to engage more, some wish to detach a little. Tejinder Singh Tur, 50-year-old MD of Padmashree Productions Pvt Ltd, believes with utmost conviction that nowadays, somehow, we all have become slaves to our gadgets. He says, “I will restrict my time for social media to only work-related activities and give quality time in the evenings and on holidays to my family. I feel we’ve all started depriving ourselves of these little joys of life.”
