Abstract
It has been observed that social media platforms have had both a positive and negative effect on how India has dealt with the COVID 19 pandemic. As the coronavirus took over the world, many took to social media to learn about how the virus spreads and what it is. Although this helped inform everyone on how to take precautions against this deadly virus, a lot of the information that users were reading was not verified or fact-checked and labeled as "fake news".
 In the modern world, information is spread very quickly through a variety of social media platforms. Because of this, there was widespread panic even before the COVID-19 virus had even reached India. Many citizens bought an excessive surplus of supplies such as masks, hand sanitizers, and food, which ultimately led to a shortage of these supplies for the 1.3 billion people in this country. The shortage of supplies along with the lockdown process which severely impacted the economy has led to an increase in price to the majority of essential products such as food, hand sanitizers, masks, etc. The most affected were the average day workers.
 Social media has caused widespread panic and hogging of essential supplies along with false facts of the virus itself, however, there are some things that we have benefited from due to social media. For example, social media has shown us the importance of social distancing and activities that we can do to keep our mental health in check while under lockdown.
 In short, I believe social media should be regulated and kept under watch by the government in certain aspects when it comes to spreading information about pandemics like covid19. If regulated properly we can avoid mass panic and anarchy and will be able to survive this pandemic as one.
Highlights
It has been observed that social media platforms have had both a positive and negative effect on how India has dealt with the COVID 19 pandemic
False information that has been promoted through social media include improper washing techniques, social distancing, and false facts of how the virus spreads
An Indian father of three was reported to commit suicide upon hearing the diagnosis of COVID-19 because he had come to believe that there was no hope of recovery from this disease.[60]
Summary
The article was written to emphasize the need for fact-checking the news on social media before being released so that there‟s no intended chaos. He mentioned that the panic in emergency wards are "Human nature" even the counselling has been found of no use to such patients because of the misleading news about the disease they have been reading online.[63] A farmer in Chittoor district in Andhra Pradesh was reported dead on February 11th by suicide because he assumed, he was suffering from COVID-19 and could not be saved Another farmer in Uttar Pradesh committed suicide because he wanted to save his village from getting infected by COVID-19.63 All these cases got the attention of the government and the government in Kerala and Maharashtra employed mental health counsellors to counsel the patients going through isolation and even quarantine to keep a track of their anxiety and depression.[63] Social media has made it hard to differentiate fact from fiction. Everyone should avoid any sort of promotion of misleading, fake information related to COVID-19 for the betterment of the population[71,72]
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