Old days were golden days, our generation was brought up in the light of religious, ethical, and national values. This is how we learn to differentiate good and bad, to respect our teachers, law enforcing agencies because these were considered as Nobel professions, our national heroes were scholars, sportsmen and people with stature of Muhammed Ali Jinnah and Allam Iqbal. Now time has changed a lot, we are flooded with information on daily basis in social media where it’s difficult to differentiate what is good and bad or how to find what you need. Trust level is drained, use of language has shown extremes, people talking about their relationships and seeking advice from strangers. If someone is stubborn, you feel that he or she is proud of it without any realization, or they like to pretend that we are the coolest nation with no worries when reality is otherwise. For some of us social media is like a punch bag, you can come slap few people here and there to sleep well and few have sleepless night because they found such person that day who spoiled his or her mood. In, all these dark clouds we do find a ray of light, very often you find something good, nicely packed in emotions, deep realization where one can really connect and learn new perspectives of life.

Social media is meant to help us exchange information, thoughts, ideas at a faster pace however we got to make right choices, everyone seems to be running after somethings, discussion which normally happen in close doors are published in our status updates seeking as we have lost our direction as a nation. Many of us feel it’s an opportunity “as freedom of speech portals” and we can’ say or be, who we want without disclosing our real identity. Discussions which we normally avoid in our society due to our cultural or religious points of view becomes easy. People have also willing compromised their genders and pretend to show otherwise, not sure if that really help anyone in any form but for some it might be a cool way to interact, young age has own preferences and flavors which we can’t ignore at all. Few assume that life is very easy on twitter, you can say anything to anyone which you can’t say at home to your elders, no respect of anyone’s age or gender. Everyone is trying to find avenues, how to be viral and be famous overnight, a huge majority of people are using it for political purposes where sometimes passions or affiliations take over, our intellectual brilliance. It’s very difficult to find, what is our new normal as a society. Majority of stuff we watch or observe is full of emotions, good or bad doesn’t matter. There are people with thousands of followers but no real friends and before they get viral or famous if their journey stops, they are merely a username, password lost in information technology world.

Our potential is a lot more, we have many brilliant brains waiting for opportunity, who really believe in hard work and waiting for real opportunities. There are people, who still believe that life is all about affection and love either towards humanity, your religion or your country and they truly invest time on those lines. Few believe that we must stay united and think big as a nation and contribute big time to unite Islamic world. No matter what your aim is, all must be packaged or aligned with our social and moral values. We respect all and we respect every opinion in our society and that’s the real beauty of our society that we learn to live with differences.

What do you think, is that really, who we are? Where is our culture, religion and ethical values lost in translation and who do we want to be following the dream of Iqbal and be a true change agent in our society. Technological advancement is happening for good, but we must look at positive aspect and use them to transform our society and make our country a better place to live.

Reminder – again no laughing please.