Life and Death in the Time of Social Media
Everyone deserves their dignity and peace of mind
Is a child born if you don’t put their picture up on the internet? Perhaps not.
Have you really paid your respects to a deceased unless your social media is updated with a heart-wrenching caption along with a picture of you both hugging? It is doubtful, too.
Or that is what it seems to me these days.
I enjoy the sight of those cuddly, wriggly babies as much as anyone else. In fact, I constantly pester friends and cousins for pictures of their newborns, and pore over their collection of the little ones decked up in tiny sunglasses and pink frills. That way, you can easily keep track of what the next generation looks like, and how cute they act. Always useful and heartwarming information to have.
But here I am talking of the more — for lack of a better word — disconcerting pictures. I was actually alarmed when a picture of a newborn, complete with the placenta and umbilical cord, popped up on my newsfeed. The child, not surprisingly, was a messy glob of blood and white matter. The mother looked disoriented, making a feeble attempt to smile for the camera. Childbirth must indeed be the most beautiful feeling in the world, a moment to treasure forever. Also understandable that the parents…
