Whatsapp- What’s up?

There is no doubt that the instant messaging application WhatsApp has become the rage today because it is so good to use. We can send texts, photos, videos and audio notes to each other at almost zero price (hardly a dollar); we can even create different chat groups and chat with many people in a same message box. All these advantages make WhatsApp become indispensable in our daily life. Some people have already stopped using traditional instant messaging function, which is normally preinstalled in every cell phone, using WhatsApp whenever they want to text their contacts instead.

But are we just ignoring its possible down shots?

Let me be clear: I have nothing against people who use WhatsApp, but I am very concerned about those who allow WhatsApp to use them!

In my profession I come across and interact with many students. I have been closely observing the effect of WhatsApp on a student’s life and I claim that the effect is more adverse and detrimental to one’s career.

Following are my observations:

1. Whatsapp Status:  Most important point worth noting is the WhatsApp 'Status' feature. It is so good that it creates a familiar environment. For Example: Neha is online but not yet responded, Ayan is always online and gives instant response, Arbaaz was last seen on 24/11/2012 at 2:00 AM, John status cannot be seen because he blocked me etc. These are the details which creates a great impact on mind. Even if you are not close to your WhatsApp contact, this virtual interaction has great impact than physical interaction.

2. Text, without feelings: Psychologically, the impact and imagination goes with text. A good text can create huge impact and similarly an irrational text can be disaster. The text becomes the sole means of emotion; you can easily hide your actual feeling and trick people.

3. Emoticons: One of the important feature of watsapp but has the potential to ruin one’s life! This is a grave issue, wherein the one reading at the other ends is hoaxed with texts and wrong emoticons. Imagine a scenario where person A is hanging out with his friends and in parallel, having a watsapp chat with person B. Person A is actually  laughing at the fullest and in parallel sends a crying smiley to person B. Now, visualize the signal sent across to person B and its consequence on the mind. Needless to explain it further.

4. Mobile Screen- our world: Here is another observation. In a party or any sort of gathering, if any of your friend is long sitting in corner operating his cell phone? Well, this is another major issue of this addictive messenger. The impacts are so powerful that users leave the real world interest, their entire emotion is restricted to the app, they get happy or sad depending on the reply they get from other users. WhatsApp users has serious addiction issue, they are hypnotized and controlled by other users. They are so into it that they cannot help themself without constantly chatting, replying and sharing all the time, regardless of the scenario.

5. Instant pleasure: The impacts are serious on regular day to day life. (at college or at work), it offers a pleasure that gives you nothing but constant dependency, you will keep on reading status, replying and sharing. If something goes out of proportion, you will keep fixing it entire day, this way it steals away your productive work and you end up lost your precious time, days and years.

6. Comprehension problems:  If we communicate primarily through the screen, we do not learn the subtleties of real life communication - such as body language, tone of voice, gestures, etc.

7. Instant messenger, instant depression:  After spending a lot of time on watsapp, some become anxious and moody. Also, a vulnerable person may suffer from depression when he reads great things happening to his friends, and his life is not so great in comparison, especially because news sharing is viral on watsapp. Those who experience "Watsapp depression" usually have trouble with social interactions in general.

I’ve been observing the above points for more than couple of years now and here are some free advises (especially for students):

1. Limit your use whatsapp use: Limiting your whatsapp usage to a defined time span will reduce your dependency on the app. Of course this is a personal judgment, around 30minutes in a day sounds fair enough (for a person who is already addicted)!

2. Offline when in college: Preferably, switch off the data connection of your mobile phone when in college. Highly unlikely that you will need a working data connection (for an email or any other purpose) and hence it is suggested that you remain offline. This will drastically increase your productivity when in college and reduce the disturbances caused due to frequent beeps/rings.

3. Cautious usage of emoticons/text: Don’t get bluffed by disastrous texts or false emoticons. This is a critical topic and one needs to be extra cautious in this regards.

4. Last seen, doesn’t matter: Avoid observing the last seen status of a user unless the reply you are expecting is very urgent. Again, a very critical topic and one needs intense control over the self to practice this.

Whatsapp- What’s up? :)