New Delhi, May 23 -- Do you ever think back to what life was like before social media? For me, the social media revolution burst upon us with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and later TikTok and Instagram. There were other social networks first, but it's these that truly changed our collective social fabric and the rules of human engagement.

I remember being really optimistic and excited about social media sometime between 2007 and 2009. Then onward, you could express yourself to the whole world, find old connections, make new ones, set up businesses and run them to reach an audience online, crowd-fund a cause, complain to companies and institutions and even influence how they're being run.

For the first time, the public at large had a voice...