Mohmad Iqbal Khandy
Making reels and watching reels have become an addiction to this generation. It is rare to see a person busy with the mobile phone and not watching the reels. Gardens, trekking sites, vehicles, restaurants, malls, riversides–every public place has become the reel-shooting site. The young people are more vulnerable to this addiction. The obsession with making reels is slowly turning every moment and every place in to a stage for social media. What starts as entertainment can become and addiction and sometimes. It comes at the cost of our privacy, dignity, time and even the career of our youth.
The muddle begins when making reels changes from a hobby in to an obsession and starts affecting studies, work, relationships, privacy or career. The young people are seen more interested in making reels to get fame and popularity. They want people to like, share and comment their reels. Other causes of the addiction include influencer culture, monetization opportunities, peer influence and fear of feeling left behind if they don’t follow the trends. In 90’s, people used to explore the things in a different way.
They travelled to experience different places, spent time with family-n-friends, played outdoors and enjoyed each moment without feeling the need to record all these things. They used to share experiences during their exposure visit with family-n-friends. Now-a-days, we often explore things to make reels rather than to make sweet memories. They used to live the moment and now, we often live for the camera. I am a kid of 90’s and i still remember the things well. Whenever we travelled distances, went for picnics, attended any programme, visited a new place or simply gathered with relatives or friends, we were busy living the moment rather than recording them. There were no smart phones in our hands, no cameras pointed at us and no pressure to create content for social media. We explored everything with curiosity, enjoyed conversations, played together and then returned home with sweet memories in our hearts.
The young generation focus on useless content creation compromising on their future. They ruin their future. They are losing their precious time, health, wellbeing, valuable social relations and most importantly they risk on their education, skills and goals. Present day influencer, capture every moment of visit in his phone and then shares with the family and friends. Instead of experiencing the place, enjoying the surroundings, and creating the memories together, everyone watches the recorded moments on a screen- while the actual experience is left behind. Perhaps they are recording too much and living too little. But what we did in our times is quite different.
“Choose presence over posts, skills over scrolls, and genuine impact over fleeting metrics. Your time is priceless—build a life worth living, not just a feed worth following. Real-world experiences and meaningful contributions outweigh digital validation every time.”
We used to explore, enjoy the nature and created memories in our hearts and minds. When we returned home, we carried back not hundreds of reels, but stories, feelings, experiences and vivid imagination. We would sit with our family-n-friends and narrate everything we had seen. They listened eagerly, imagined the places through our words and often became curious to explore them someday themselves.
The craze of reel- making has taken several lives and ended many in serious injuries throughout india and in j&k as well. In june 2021, a young tourist from up died after she and her sister slipped in to the shali ganga stream while making reels. Her sister was rescued in an injured condition. Another accident was reported at the same spot in october 2024. In april 2023, a woman was fatally struck by a moving train while reportedly shooting a video near srinagar-budgam railway line. In the race to capture the perfect picture or reel, we sometimes forget that a beautiful view is not worth risking a precious life.
It is time to counsel and guide the young minds to come out of this fragile world of virtual validation and reel addiction. They need to understand that life is much important than likes, views, followers and fleeting online fame. Let them use technology as a tool, not allow technology to use them.
My suggestion to the young generation is to enjoy life before you record it. Making reels and creating digital content is not wrong, but giving it priority at the cost of your precious time, health, relationships, education and career is not fair. Do not risk your life for a few minutes of online attention. Explore places, enjoy surroundings, learn new skills, make good relations and create memories that remain in your heart and mind rather than in your smart phones. If you have talent and knowledge for content creation, use it positively to aware, inspire, inform, showcase something meaningful. Followers may come and go, trends may change, but your time, life and career will never come back. Build a life worth remembering, not just a profile worth scrolling.
(The author a J&K-UT Best Teacher Awardee is a Teacher at Middle School Badray, Vailoo District Anantnag. The views, opinions and conclusions expressed in this article are those of the author and aren’t necessarily in accord with the views of “Kashmir Horizon”)
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