Social media has made it easy for us to share condolences when someone loses a loved one but it hasn’t taught us the online culture of being sensitive to someone’s loss. The country has been in a state of mourning for the past week and the person that has had the most difficult task of dealing with it will be the wife of the late Major. If this had happened some years ago when social media wasn’t extensively used like it is nowadays, she would have had to endure all the calls, text messages and teeming numbers of sympathizers who would have invaded her home just to offer their condolences. (Not that she is not already having that)
But now what do we see???
Facebook posts
Instagram posts
Twitter posts
And all these posts are announcing the death of the late Major. Others are even showing the gruesome manner in which he lost his life.
No one is against the act of putting up memories or a few pictures and sharing the fond times that you might have shared with the person for the whole world to know that you have lost someone.
But then again before you put out the post IMMEDIATELY you hear the news, wait for a while and ask yourself if the immediate family are aware of whatever has happened.
Do not be the bearer of bad news and be the one to quickly put up the post expressing your shock at whatever has happened, after all you are not the family head.
If you are in no way related to the deceased family WAIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Keep waiting until you are very sure that the family is in the know.
And when you would want to put up something on your social media page, desist from sharing or posting a picture or a video showing what might have caused the death of the person.
I try hard to understand what the point of doing that is. Is it to make the pain any better??? I don’t think so.
Everyone has their way of grieving so in as much as the person would put up a strong face in front of everyone, in the person’s heart and mind you and I do not know what is going on there so let us try to be a little discreet as to what we put out there.
So the next time we all decide to put out another post expressing our condolences or the manner in which someone lost their lives, whether old or young, whether through natural causes or not, let us put ourselves in the shoes of the immediate family and ask ourselves if we woke and we were tagged in a thousand pictures or videos from a lot of strangers concerning how our loved ones died or announcing their death how would we feel?
