YOU KNOW the tale about the King of Somewhere going on a visit to a mental hospital to raise awareness about mental health issues?

He was being conducted around the wards and corridors by hospital administrators and occasionally interacting with some of the patients when one patient asked him, “But who are you and what is this all about?”

“I am the King of Somewhere, and I am here to lend you my support by raising awareness, support, and funds for people like you,” said the monarch politely.

“Aha,” said the patient. “This is a very good hospital. They perform miracles here. When I got here, I thought I was the Pope, so don’t worry; you will be fine within a couple of years…”

Starting your morning by going straight to ‘the social media’ is quite like walking round unguided through a very long and crowded corridor of a large, busy, and unsupervised mental institution.

Not just in Uganda, where someone once declared that more than a third of us have mental health issues. Most of the entire world is like that these days.

Various psychologists and researchers have worked out the effect on the human psyche of this increased access to technology and the internet, and specifically social media platforms.

I can’t read all the papers published about this. I just know what I see when I venture into those corridors. I am sometimes like that King.

In fact, there is a version of that little tale where the dignified visitor walking the corridors loses sight of his minders and is stopped from leaving the hospital by the mental health nurses.

“Wait!” he declares, “I am only a visitor here!”

“Yeah, yeah,” responds the head nurse. “They all think they are visitors. Let’s get you back to your bed and give you your medicine…”

That’s me sometimes, when I dig into some conversations, or updates, or ‘You won’t believe what happens if you do this!’ and ‘I was today years old when I learnt…’

The irony is annoying. In this mental hospital of our social media world, we can find reason in proverbs like ‘A cat may look at a king’. I have used that before to explain the democratization of society by means of social media.

are we really equal, though?

We all have an equal footing as far as stating opinions is concerned. Very good, eh? Be Serious.

In an atmosphere of sensibility, decorum, and sincerity, such democratic ideals would be welcome.

The irony, though, is annoying: it would appear that the vast majority of us on social media know very, very little in spite of having so much information literally at our fingertips.

It’s ironic because, in general, our fathers knew more of what they knew than we do of what we know, and our grandfathers even more than them—yet we have much more information and access to information than they would ever dream of.

Back then they had editors to filter information and only present it once it was checked and filtered for nonsense, and you received it in carefully administered doses.

The authorities on things, in general, were actually authorities who had earned their positions through regular means of study and practice.

Today? Anybody can say anything about anything all the damn time, non-stop. There are people in Uganda who are leading political commentators for no reason you can explain without fearing you will be committed to a mental hospital yourself.

I’ve seen teenagers googling economic phrases so they can respond to an economics professor about macro-economic policy in a two-hundred character social media post.

On platforms like Instagram, there are millions of ‘hacks’ that seem authentic and amazing, kumbe people out there are just pranking us because they have sharp-resolution cameras and think creating chaos is fun.

And because, again due to the structure of this social media mental institution, they go viral very quickly amongst their own and…fake fantasy becomes fact.

Back then, in my own lifetime, we were required to read and think carefully and compose ourselves in order to engage in discourse. Even the bimeeza we would show up at here in Kampala required us to be both knowledgeable and orderly.

Speaking in anger was frowned upon, and debates were moderated by right-thinking people of good standing in society.

Today it’s an intellectual cacophony that flows in such a barrage you have little time to think through it. People tweet and post in instantaneous anger because they don’t have to load up their fountain pens with ink, arrange their desks and then eventually buy postage stamps to send off their missives.

We need to find and give more audience to the psychologist who said human beings are not emotionally equipped to consume so many people’s views and emotions so easily and so frequently.

Social media needs to be consumed carefully—and especially this year as we go into another round of electioneering. Our mental health is at serious risk both individually and as a body collective, and it will get worse very soon.

I’ve learned to filter some of my interactions and avoid the FOMO on some conversations out there. It’s not easy and needs lots of practice.

We are all going to need that practice so we avoid being committed to this mental health institution for eternity.

Tell your children.

Be Serious.

—

Simon Kaheru

www.skaheru.com
@skaheru