The world today is addicted to social media, Facebook itself contributing millions of users in India alone. The data that gets posted and shared is so immense that the truth between truth and lies are diminishing day by day. There are many who share news and so-called 'facts' without even checking the authenticity and also act as 'WhatsApp University' professors who have an opinion that is based on their emotions and argue hard that it is the truth citing few examples that are borderline reality.

The truth is often harsh and may not always be in alignment with our personal beliefs and less appealing to the audience. Social media platforms work on data and how they get posted and shared and information has to flow more for them to generate revenue. Governments, corporate giants all want to influence the public in one way or the other that is beneficial for them that they generate or make others generate favorable posts/survey results on social media platforms. This may look very genuine at first but if we do a search on Google, we get to understand the authenticity of many facts and most of them would be getting 'fake alerts'.  People find it easy to live in their own personal beliefs and create a post truth era for themselves that they portray in different social medias as well. When many people recite/share the news, it becomes viral and attracts more people to read/watch it and gain popularity. Mostly expert and informed opinions are secondary to emotions in social media and are often criticized by those who are not aware of the situation. As users, we need to fact check and not blindly post/share news and this responsibility will help us as the first step while using social media.

Celebrities or leaders worldwide have millions of followers and even fake profiles as followers to generate a persona online. They want to show how much respected or celebrated they are but they create post truths and their followers are forced in a way or other to support them even for crimes in social media. We should think of the impact this has on our individual lives and the society before posting or supporting such people's posts. They want to generate money for them by posting their pictures on social media and we should not blindly follow them. It is time for us to be socially responsible on social media as we are the society and we are creating the future.

We have to limit overuse of social media and use it to share good and helpful posts that will benefit the society. In this era, it is hard as people want to satisfy their inborn need for validation and hence use social media for the same. It wastes our time and almost always doesn't create a real positive impact on us, but just a virtual satisfaction. We are somehow dominated by the “now or never” rule spread by social media, we need information about the world to make us feel part of it at any cost, even if in the process what we access to or receive is partial or incomplete, which is a big danger in itself. Social media customizes data and now feeds us news to match our personal likes, if you watch a cooking video, more cooking videos are shown to you and if you watch a celebrity interview, promotion posts related to their other interviews/shows start showing up which means we are being watched, our activity is tracked in the name of 'personalized and improved performance'. The rumors and speculations shared by us on social media suddenly get the status of truth just for being acknowledged by us. In the end, it doesn’t even matter whether it's true or not, what matters is that this information speaks about us and we are an active part of it as we make the social media ourselves.

The kind of posts we see basically change our thoughts to align with them and even can have an impact on world events, a good example being how Donald Trump won the US presidential elections by the influencing nature of social media in this post truth era. Social media which most people thought would advocate true democracy are in many ways manipulated and everything around is played around to make the rich richer while democracy is just a word written on paper. Instead of the want for validation online, we should believe that what we do in real life has the most impact. Social media is a two sided sword, we need caution while using it, mostly it is uncontrolled and for many an unsupervised, free world to express themselves and their beliefs.

Fake news is considered by many as the real virus these days. When a vaccination comes, there is uproar on social media that it is not effective and has not been experimented. Doctors argue over it, many post videos and reviews, some may sound very genuine to us. We need to check with a registered medical practitioner and believe in their expertise rather than falling prey to these sudden geniuses who appear online for a few minutes of fame. Many videos online are edited or enhanced and we should genuinely think about the practicality before trying to apply that in our life. Kids/teenagers should be given special attention if they are influenced/using social media. The eagerness for following the trends and viral tricks can even be life threatening and parents should caution children on the difference between reality and social media fame.

Social media can make/break events and people and now it requires changes in our laws where the spreading of false news should be controlled and contents needs to be checked for authenticity. With YouTube providing money for video/content creators, people are in a rat race for creating unique contents even if they are fake. Social media should be used only sparingly and with a thorough understanding that what we see there may not always be true. We should not be prey to the weaponization of social media.

Social media is slowly transforming into Metaverse, a digital world where reality can also be challenged and real laws will not be applicable. Metaverse, currently in news because Facebook changed its name itself to Meta emphasizing on this concept,  is a combination of virtual reality, augmented reality and video where users can literally 'live' by exploring, interacting and playing within a digital universe. This has a lot of implications and many people may use it to actually harass others or even find loopholes to commit crimes. Nobody has full or correct answers on the governance of such virtual worlds and how much chaos to expect in this post truth era itself.

Our life experiences shape us, it is our moral responsibility to never leave our integrity and use self diligence when on social media. This helps us and others and saves us from future embarrassment. What we post or share on social media/online stays forever in one form or another, even after it is deleted. We should think of securing our life and helping others rather than going on Twitter wars.