Bollywood Stars quit Social Media over ‘Toxicity’

Several Bollywood celebrities have deactivated their social media accounts due to the negativity and toxicity prevalent on the platforms.

Stars like Sonakshi Sinha, Saqib Saleem, Shashank Khaitan and more decided to bid adieu to their respective accounts.

Reportedly, this all began when actress Kriti Sanon criticised social media as the “new real world.”

Taking to Instagram, she wrote:

“Its strange that the otherwise trolling, gossiping world suddenly wakes up to your niceness and positive side once you are gone.

“Social media is the FAKEST, most toxic place .. and if you haven’t posted RIP or said something publicly, you are considered not to be grieving, when in reality, those are the people grieving for REAL.

“It seems Social Media is the new “Real” world .. and the Real world has become “Fake.”

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Kriti’s outburst came after the shocking and untimely death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput.

Actress Sonakshi Sinha announced that she has left Twitter. She shared a post which read:

“The first step to protecting your sanity is to stay away from negativity. And no where more of that than twitter these days!

“Chalo, I’m off – deactivating my account. Bye guys, peace out.”

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Soon after Saqib Saleem declared that he was parting ways with Twitter. He wrote:

“I’m Breaking Up with you Twitter.”

He further added:

“You seem to have gotten lost in all the hate everyone is ready to throw at each other, a place full of bullies, a place where abusing people is a normal code of conduct … I don’t need this kind of energy.”

The next to jump on the bandwagon were actors Aayush Sharma and Zaheer Iqbal who each said “goodbye” to Twitter.

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Filmmaker Madhur Bhandarkar referred to social media as a “double-edged sword”. He said:

“Social media is toxic, no two ways about it. Sometimes, you get rattled mercilessly, even a spelling mistake gets one trolled.

“It has become proof, people take screenshots. You post and think, ‘maine barabar kiya na?’ and check again, because suddenly, you fear being trolled.

“People get hurt over anything, be it your outlandish clothes, even eating pictures, with comments like, ‘there are lakhs of people who don’t have food.’”

Shashank Khaitan shared a post expressing the same sentiment as Kriti. He said:

“Done with twitter … just a breeding ground for hate and negativity … very sad that a platform so powerful, could not be used to create a better world … praying for peace and love always … deactivating my account now … @TwitterIndia.”

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However, actor Amit Sadh stated that social media concerns human psychology. He explained:

“Unfortunately, as human beings, when we’re engaged with provoking and uncomfortable things, it’s human psychology that we want to shut the door and we call it toxic.

“It’s not just about social media. You decide what strata of social media you want to be in and in that course, in case there’s something toxic, or upsets you, you can choose to engage or not.”