The Negative Impact of Social Media during COVID-19

Abstract

It has been observed that social media platforms have had both a positive and negative effect on how India has dealt with the COVID 19 pandemic. As the coronavirus took over the world, many took to social media to learn about how the virus spreads and what it is. Although this helped inform everyone on how to take precautions against this deadly virus, a lot of the information that users were reading was not verified or fact-checked and labeled as "fake news".

In the modern world, information is spread very quickly through a variety of social media platforms. Because of this, there was widespread panic even before the COVID-19 virus had even reached India. Many citizens bought an excessive surplus of supplies such as masks, hand sanitizers, and food, which ultimately led to a shortage of these supplies for the 1.3 billion people in this country. The shortage of supplies along with the lockdown process which severely impacted the economy has led to an increase in price to the majority of essential products such as food, hand sanitizers, masks, etc. The most affected were the average day workers.

Social media has caused widespread panic and hogging of essential supplies along with false facts of the virus itself, however, there are some things that we have benefited from due to social media. For example, social media has shown us the importance of social distancing and activities that we can do to keep our mental health in check while under lockdown.

In short, I believe social media should be regulated and kept under watch by the government in certain aspects when it comes to spreading information about pandemics like covid19. If regulated properly we can avoid mass panic and anarchy and will be able to survive this pandemic as one.