social media
The writer, Ayyad Dilawar Padhani is in Marketing at his family optical practice. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Management, Marketing and related support services. He has been rendering community services from a very early age.
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ocial media has become a major part of everyone’s lives for a bit over a decade now, and the positive effects and the negative have been studied, and documented.
Social media, for all its harmful consequences, has given power to the individual and a voice to the voiceless on multiple occasions in the past decade, giving life to movements that would otherwise be ignored or suppressed by big media.
In today’s reflection I would like to introduce to you the idea of ‘barakah in time’ and how social media has the power to negatively affect that.
Using these powerful tools purposefully, and deliberately, knowing what outcomes we want to achieve on them allow us to spend less time, while also achieving certain goals. However, in reality, social media is often seen as addictive due to the entertainment part of the app.
We have a greater purpose in life, whether we say believing in and worshipping Allah, being mindful of our duties to Him, or we say serving the people, speaking up for the oppressed, being charitable, and bringing impact to our locality, entertainment past a certain limit becomes destructive to our goals.
This can be in three ways: first is by wasting valuable time which could have otherwise been used to do more productive tasks, and this is the most understood aspect of time wasting on social media. Secondly, it makes us lazy to do fruitful activities later on after the entertainment session, having drained us of our physical and mental energy and strength. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it steals the barakah in our time. Days spent in jest, wastefully over playful entertainment will reduce not only our perceived feeling of how time passes, but also how effective we are in those same hours.
Some Ayaat from the Holy Qur’an that have helped shape the above thoughts are as below:
Surah 14:7: If you are grateful, I will certainly give you more.
Surah 7: 31: O children of Adam! Wear your beautiful apparel at every time and place of prayer; eat and drink; but waste not by excess, for God loves not the wasters.
Surah 7:96: Had the people of those societies been faithful and mindful ?of Allah?, We would have overwhelmed them with blessings from heaven and earth. But they disbelieved, so We seized them for what they used to commit.
Surah 103:1-3: By time, Indeed, mankind is at loss, Except for those who have believed and done righteous deeds and advised each other to truth and advised each other to patience.
We hope and pray not to be among those who show gratitude for the time given to us, by utilising it wisely, by not being among those who waste it, rather use it well through planning and purpose. So that we should not miss any opportunities to worship Allah (SWT), to work hard towards earning a living, to serve the community around us, and not to be questioned harshly on the day of judgement for not using time most appropriately.
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