The Curse
How Social Media Is Desecrating Our Relationships, Culture, and the Sanctity of Death
In Yoruba culture, there are certain tragedies people pray never to experience. One of them is the death of a child before their parents. It is a painful reversal of the natural order of life, a tragedy so profound that even your enemy would not wish it upon you.
Yet, in the world we have created for ourselves, even death no longer commands the reverence it deserves. The passing of popular gospel musician Toluwanimisings and the events surrounding her death and burial have once again exposed how much we have lost as a people. Instead of allowing the bereaved to mourn, we have turned grief into public entertainment, family relationships into battlegrounds, and private pain into content for social media consumption.
Everyone suddenly has an opinion. Everyone knows who is right, who is wrong, and who deserves sympathy. But the irony is that many of those who speak so confidently about other people’s pain would probably react differently if they found themselves in the same situation.
It is easy to pass judgment when you are not the one wearing the shoes.
There was a time when certain things were considered sacred. Death was one of them. Even when families disagreed, there was an understanding that some moments required restraint, decorum, and compassion. The bereaved needed space to grieve, while the community had a responsibility to offer support rather than become another source of pain.
Today, parents who have lost children sometimes have to contend not only with grief but also with family disputes and public accusations. Widows are made to fight for their rights, orphans are caught in battles over property, and immediate family members struggle to mourn their loved ones in peace.
What happened to our sense of humanity? What happened to the values that once guided our relationships and helped us navigate difficult moments?
We cannot continue to pride ourselves on our culture while discarding the very principles that give it meaning.
One troubling feature of our present reality is how family tragedies become public spectacles. A death occurs, disagreements emerge, and before long, social media becomes a courtroom. Everyone is a judge, everyone is a prosecutor, and everyone is ready to deliver a verdict based on fragments of information.
People wash their dirty linens in public, exposing private family matters to strangers who have no responsibility for the consequences of their opinions. Stories are twisted, narratives manipulated, and emotions weaponised to attract attention.
For some, the objective is not justice, reconciliation, or even the truth. It is engagement: the views, comments, shares, and followers that can be gained from another person’s misfortune. And because outrage sells, the more sensational the story, the better.
This is not an argument for silence in the face of injustice. There are legitimate reasons to speak up, particularly where abuse, exploitation, or the violation of someone’s rights is involved. But there is a difference between seeking justice and exploiting grief. Not every family disagreement needs an audience, and not every opinion needs to be expressed simply because we have a platform.
We must ask ourselves: at what point did another person’s pain become an opportunity for personal gain?
Perhaps the greater tragedy is the gradual death of community in our society.
There was a time when community parenting meant that people felt some responsibility for the well-being of others. Your neighbour’s child was not entirely someone else’s problem. When a family experienced a tragedy, the community rallied around them, offering practical help, counsel, and comfort.
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Today, suspicion and disdain seem to have replaced much of that communal spirit. We live in a society increasingly defined by “I better pass my neighbour.” We are more interested in proving that we are better than others than in helping them through difficult moments.
Social media has amplified this decline, turning us into spectators to one another’s suffering. We pick sides, condemn people we barely know, and celebrate when our preferred narrative appears to win. We have become so absorbed in proving ourselves right that we often forget the human beings at the centre of the story.
Everyone has an opinion until they become the victim. Everyone knows what a widow should do until they lose a spouse. Everyone knows how a family should behave until they experience a tragedy of their own.
Perhaps we need to pause before condemning others and ask ourselves whether we would appreciate the same treatment if the circumstances were reversed.
At the root of much of this, I believe, is our growing obsession with money, wealth, and material possessions.
We have created a society where the accumulation of wealth is celebrated, sometimes regardless of how it is acquired. In our desperation to get ahead, we abandon decorum, compromise our values, and become increasingly indifferent to the consequences of our actions.
Greed and avarice have found their way into relationships that should be built on love, trust, and mutual responsibility. Even in death, the question of who owns what, who deserves what, and who has the right to what can become more important than the life that has been lost.
What is the value of money if it makes us disregard the sanctity of human life? What is the point of social influence if we use it to humiliate the bereaved? And what does it profit us to win an argument before the public if, in the process, we deepen the pain of people who are already hurting?
Our children are watching us. They are learning from the way we treat people, the way we speak about the dead, and the way we respond to the suffering of others. If all we demonstrate is greed, public humiliation, and a desperate need to prove ourselves right, what values are we passing on to the next generation?
We cannot continue to preach family values while celebrating the public destruction of families. We cannot claim to cherish our culture while abandoning the respect and communal responsibility that once sustained it.
The curse is not that social media has given everyone a voice. The curse is that we have become so desperate to be heard that we no longer care who we hurt in the process.
It is not that people demand justice, but that we sometimes confuse justice with public humiliation and accountability with entertainment. Nor is it simply that our culture is changing; it is that we are losing the values that should guide us through those changes.
The death of a loved one should remind us of the fragility of life and the importance of the relationships we leave behind. It should call us to reflection and compassion, not competition and online applause.
The dead deserve dignity. The bereaved deserve compassion. Families deserve the opportunity to resolve their differences without becoming unwilling participants in a public spectacle.
Until we recover our sense of decorum, rebuild our commitment to community, and stop measuring success solely by what we can acquire or gain, we will continue to desecrate the very relationships that give life meaning.
And perhaps that is the greatest curse of all: that in our pursuit of wealth, attention, and the satisfaction of being right, we may lose our humanity and not even realise it.
