Perceptions
TV's Smarter, Faster Replacement
Photo: Prabir Das
Until June 2011, TV was the only form of entertainment to over 1500 young women at Ruquayyah Hall, one of the oldest women's hostel of Dhaka University. Now, after so many years, a simple Wi-Fi connection is changing the the lifestyle of most of the residents.
With access to social media like Facebook, Youtube, blogs, messenger; Skype, Google, and Yahoo, students have become hooked on to their laptops or mobiles and pay less attention to television. This scenario is almost the same in other halls of DU. Some students did have internet connection even before 2011, mostly through modem or broadband line, but due to slow speed they were not as popular as they are at present.
Social media is gradually becoming the most popular source of entertainment. It also continues to play its role as a source of information. According to Nielsen, Facebook has more than one billion active users as on October 2012. Among them 32,33,300 are from Bangladesh, which makes it 49th in the ranking of Facebook users by country.
“Actually this is the hunger to create a virtual community,” says Nusrat Armin, a final year student of Psychology. “Particularly for those who are staying far from their families. Social media is the most effective and easy means for them to stay connected with their respective family and friends through video chatting, picture sharing, situation updating and so on, which can make a virtual presence to each other”, she adds.
Photo: Zahedul I Khan
“When we are in front of the TV we still feel lonely,” says Dipa, a 4th year student of Fine Arts. “Through the cable connection, we now have many channels with various programmes, especially those with entertaining content. But those cannot engage us like Facebook and chatting. TV is a medium of one-way communication whereas social media offers two-way communication where we can give our feedback. On the other hand the content of the social media are generated by its users like us, where we can share our individual feelings, views, opinions, likes or dislikes, we can oppose or agree with others and so on.”
“Traditional media is time consuming sources of entertainment compared to social media”, says Papia, a masters student of Sociology. “Where we have to wait for hours, days - even months to watch a new movie, song or drama on TV or to get information from the newspaper, we can get all this within a few minutes from various social media which makes our life more pleasurable. Frankly speaking, apart from watching updates of breaking news or when there is a disruption in internet connection I usually do not like to watch TV”, she adds.
"Are you a first year student?" Only a few years back this would be a very common question at Ruquayyah Hall TV room, particularly when it came to deciding who had the rights to the remote control. Not anymore. With the blessings of social media, students get the opportunity and choice to fulfill their individual needs of entertainment.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments