Believe it or not, every good thing has an evil side to it. While some consider Whatsapp to be the boon created by man for his mankind, some feel it acts as a venom. With the unlimited messaging, texts, calls, audio/video calls, it has emerged as an easy way to keep in touch with friends and family. Technology has emerged so much that sometimes intruding into one’s privacy is no more seen as an offense. Everybody intrudes into each other’s life and twists it according to the story they want to convey.
Social media has taken over a large chunk of our lives. Let it be the statuses, double ticks, last seen, blue tick and whatnot! Right? Don’t you seem to be like you are under surveillance by your friends, family and Oh, how can we forget, your boyfriends and girlfriends?
Here are a few ways in which Whatsapp is making lives difficult for all of us.
Top Reasons How Whatsapp Is Becoming A Problem
1Statuses
Let’s start with the basic. Everyone on Whatsapp has a status either according to their mood, their excitement level or anything related to what have been feeling. When people fight, love, have fun, they often show their emotions through their statuses. The first thing you will be questioned is on the status. Why are you happy? What’s going on? Who is the person you are referring to? Random questions like these crop up and seems to be cropping from everyone. The uncle from Ethiopia, your long forgotten cousin will question you about your life. Do we even need this grilling from people?
2Last seen
Ouch! That very word hurts. Doesn’t it? Since the time this feature of last seen has been involved in people’s life, replying has become a mandate for everyone. If you don’t reply, you would be facing unforeseen consequences. Being online, if you decide not to reply to a person, they may get irritated with you for seeing the message and staying mum. If you are deciding not to reply to your boyfriend, then roll up your sleeves to attend to a few more accusations from his side.
3Blue ticks
After there were a few relationship issues, someone somehow thought it was a good idea of coming up with hiding the last seen status. While people were happily hiding their last seen, Whatsapp played another tantra on all of us. The blue tick system is basically where the other person easily finds out that you have read their messages. This screws up much more than necessary. If you are hiding away from someone in Whatsapp, that is never going to happen.
4Over emotions on Whatsapp
When was the last time you wished your friend in person or by calling him/her? Whatsapp does have the easy facility of texting or even Whatsapp calling now for free. The over emotions are something that is very irritating sometimes. Isn’t it? The calling has made it super easy for you to call and wish. The over emotions on texts are something that can easily get on people’s nerves.
5No Privacy
Technology is so highly developed these days that it leaves us with absolutely no privacy. What is privacy? It is subjective! Some people may not want to be disturbed at all, some people choose to not be disturbed from a particular person. It depends on whom you are texting or communicating with. When it comes to Whatsapp, a teenager doesn’t get his privacy at all. It’s either the parents, boyfriend/girlfriend or even professors for that matter.
Parents have also become tech savvy that they have started keeping a tab on their children through Whatsapp statuses, pictures and last seen. It sure gets irritating after a point!
6Random unwanted groups
You might not even want to be in those random groups your college friends added you in. Sometimes you wouldn’t have even realized that you are added in one of the groups with hundreds of people texting and grieving about work college, life etc. But, if you leave the group, the admin will question you and re-add you. You will have to come up with random excuses otherwise, you are sure to be judged big time by your group mates. Argh! Social responsibilities!
7Profile Picture
DP DP DP! Profile pictures are a huge turn off on Whatsapp too. Why can’t you happily change a picture? Change your display picture for once and you’ll be bombarded with various kinds of questions, and comments. From parents to friends, girlfriend/boyfriend, everyone will steal your happiness. Questions like ‘Why did you change, it was so cute’, ‘Look at you!’, ‘Are you serious? Do you want to put this Dp’ will come up! There will be no social freedom left for you!
8E-mailing conversations
Isn’t it already bad that you are texting people you don’t want to? With the status updates, dp changes, last seen problems, you also have to face accusations when it comes to chat saved on e-mails. If you have a huge fight with your partner and decide to let go, that is when he will come up with a long saved chat, which will open up previous conversations, emotional fights and arguments. Whatsapp is just too much personal life drama to handle.
Well, all said and done, there is this love hate relationship we have with Whatsapp. We love it as much as we hate it and vice versa. How much ever you want to be away from it, you will only fall into it and ruin moments for yourself. Though you know it is never really impossible to be without Whatsapp, you want to run away from it. Remember, you can run away from Whatsapp, but you can never hide from it!
-Pavithra Ravi
