WHO TELLS THE TRUTH?

With the social and economic situation that the Colombian government is experiencing in these times, we have seen how social networks have become the # 1 channel of information in the young and adult population. Videos, images and audios of acts of violence have been disseminated through all accounts and social networks.

I was discussing the other day with my father about a video that I watched and I gave him my opinion, to which he replied that it was not what happened that in everything had started for another reason and he showed me a video of which I did not know existed and it was the same video that I saw although it showed more content and the other part of the story, so it helped me to reestructure my perspective on the story. However, a few days later we saw in an Instagram post the "true" version of what had happened and they attached a video that was even much longer than the one my dad had seen and gave us a bigger panorama of the situation and completely changed our opinion of what happened. 

My point with all this is to express my frustration with some points based on the content of social networks. The first one is the veracity of it, since we are in a hyper-connected world and misinformation is increasing. It is difficult to recognize when the information we read is real, when it is false news or when they show only part of what happened (like my case) and leave the rest of the facts to the interpretation of the user.

Another issue that worries me is censorship: hiding information and violating our rights of free expression, such as the city of Siloé in Cali, in which the Internet would be blocked and social networks would not be allowing live reports to be made as in the last days, so while I write this blog a thousand things may be happening in that city and I cannot be certain since communication is down.

We know social networks have always been a double-edged sword, not only with the current situation in Colombia but also during the covid 19 pandemic. Worldwide, they have been extremely useful to promote debate among the scientific community, to share data or articles and to quickly disseminate useful results. On the other hand, they have also contributed to spreading the conclusions of flawed studies, and deliberately spreading false information about the virus.

I believe that I feel in a similar situation to when the pandemic began in which I did not know who to believe or which "official" accounts to follow on my social networks. 

Another problem that I face during these days is the oversaturation of information which bombards us and comes from all kinds of sources and we see propagated and publicity through all kinds of channels. This overwhelms me enough to the point of having to put the cell phone in airplane mode and even turn it off because I could not bear to see one more story or post about what is happening in the country. My peace of mind was on the floor and I was unable to focus on study or work because I felt too affected and bombarded with news both true and false.

One of the target of the SDG to 2030 is to "reduce by one third premature mortality from non-communicable diseases through prevention and treatment and promote mental health and well-being". Which in my opinion, is essential for every human to develop ALL our daily activities and feel good about ourselves, both mentally and physically. It is an objective that we need now more than ever with the oversaturation of information about the situation in Colombia and other crisis. I believe that we can continue fighting for our country and our rights, but to achieve this we must detox information and stop following those people and accounts that, rather than contributing to our thinking, they cloud it with lies and false information that at the end it just gets things worse.