Ever  since  whatsapp has  come into the lives of denizens ,irrespective of the age, gender, caste and religion it has  squeezed time from our already packed  schedules. Initially  it  came as  a tool which appeared  as  an alternate to the erstwhile SMS and slowly graduated  to communicating with friends intermittently. Slowly whatsapp inundated  us  with greeting  messages which  was  a welcome  change  from  sending high-priced  SMS just to wish  friends  ‘happy diwali’ or ‘happy new year’. Whatsapp features  made it all ‘free’. Due  to the simplicity of its use,  it left email and  other social networking sites or apps much  behind. Slowly from being  just  a  tool  to  text  messages  or pictoral  greetings it  graduated  to video messages, long  text  stories and  instant  news  items, which could  be circulated  across the world in  a click. A watershed  in the history of  whatsapp was the introduction of voice and  video call. The way Whatsapp had annihilated SMS, Whatsapp  voice  call  is on the  path of annihilating telephone calls.  With all these facilities on the click of a finger whatsapp has  entered  our lives ‘forever’ like a RBC cell in our blood without which  we  can’t live. Today  the whatsapp messages can be typified into – ‘information’ uploads, Sea of ‘gyan’, sensational news items, current affairs and developments, entertainment and  humour and not to miss out porn.

Every denizen on whatapp has  now  become  a  netizen. And every netizen is glued to whatsapp which includes multiple and overlapping activities like,   reading  individual text messages from friends  and acquaintances,  reading  text  messages in  groups, chatting with friends, discussions in  groups, reading  and  forwarding good messages, seeing videos, forwarding  videos, reading  links  and  forwarding links to others. And  all  this  takes  a huge amount of time. And just to get  an estimate  as to  how  much time is being  used up in doing all this I indulged , out of sheer  inquisitiveness  in a small net-based survey among some  friends and in some whatsapp groups. I  asked  four pointed questions,  how much time  do you spend in reading messages/videos, how much time do  you spend in forwarding texts/ videos,  how much time do you spend in  reading links and how much  time do you spend  in chatting  and  calling. The participants in the survey were in the   age group of  18 to 65 and included both  genders.  The  result of this survey  was shell  shocking  but I  was  prepared for the jolt.  On  an average  a person was spending a whooping 90-120 minutes  a day on this  app. Where did each person manage to cull out  this time   from  his already busy daily routine was the instant question which hit my head?

Varily speaking the implication of this neo-love, spreading pan india , pan world and pan generations is disastrous. Lets in brief analyse  how this enigma   has  effected  each one of us. For  a student sparing two hours on whatsapp means denuding two hours either from playtime or from studies and both are abysmally devastating in student life.  For an adult in a job with a family removing two hours from his busy schedule means either  denuding  time from  the  work  or from the family-time and both  are equally perilous things to do. For an old sparing  two  hours  means denuding himself from his  fixed  daily routine.

Actually ,  whatsapp is  not taking our time at  one  go. It is slowly  nibbling  time  from  our various essential activites. This  habit of  nibbling  away  chunks  of time from  our   personal time at home or from the  official time in office is keeping us afloat in a flux of distractions all  the  time. It is making  us  lose our focus from any activity we are  indulging in. Though for the bored and retired it could be a blessing in disguise.

However, for most of us, its  high time we  re-align ourself in our  lives, take stock of  the  time  available to  each one of us   and use  this social media  platform in a gainful manner and  not let it hijack our lives.