By Abdul Muhammed
“What happened to our society when private parts are turned into public parts”?
Welcome to the 21st-century marketplace, where nudity is the new currency. Forget talent, creativity, or intellectual prowess, why bother when you can simply undress for likes, shares and followership on social media in exchange for cheap money paid in hard currency? In this dazzling economy of beautiful flesh and filters, the body has become the cheapest yet most profitable commodity on sale. In today’s social media market space, attention is the gold and nakedness is the coin. Sellers bare, go stark-naked, buyers scroll and watch, while platforms and blogs profit in millions of dollars. But who pays the price, individuals, society, or our collective humanity?
The sellers are individuals, mostly young people, but not exclusively, who realized that posting provocative images and videos guarantees faster fame than showcasing skill or intelligence. The buyers are the millions who happily pay with their attention, double-tapping, likes and sharing, while convincing themselves they are just “scrolling.” And the marketplace (Social platforms, the auction galleries of vanity-profiting from every view while preaching about “community standards and regulations hypocritically.”
Who is to be blame? The sellers, who willingly auction their privacy and dignity for digital currency, the buyers, who without their hunger, the supply chain would collapse, or perhaps the real culprit (algorithm), that invisibly trade and gain between the Seller and the Buyer, by rewards ill-manners over reasonable, insensible over the sensible behavior or actions. After all, platforms thrive on engagement, and nothing engages like exposed skin and sensitive parts of the body especially that of the female folks.
The hidden costs and implications of these new norms are sobering. We are raising a generation that equates value with visibility, and visibility with vulnerability. Women, in particular, face the heavier burden, pushed deeper into the stereotype that beauty and sexuality are their strongest assets. Men, meanwhile, are handed illusions of intimacy, expectations that distort reality, and relationships that feel more transactional than genuine.
Mental health suffers most. Studies link this culture of digital exhibitionism to higher rates of body dissatisfaction, anxiety, and depression, especially among young people. It becomes a cycle: post, compare, envy, and repeat. Meanwhile, society claps along, pretending to be outraged while still fueling the trade.
In a hypocritical and ignorant society like ours, we ironically condemn “immorality” online, at religious centers, schools, public places in one breath, then in another, patronage this delusional booming business that comes with atomic missile to wipe away our moral integrity and humanity by way of likes, share, following, subscription or an ordinary scrolling through. Most of us are all traders in this market place, (buyers and sellers), and the system profits from our hypocrisy and ignorant.
A society that rewards nakedness more than creativity and hard work cannot expect innovation. A culture that teaches its youth to monetize their bodies cannot claim to be nurturing leaders for tomorrow. When morality and dignity become discounted, privacy goes out of stock, and self-respect is sold off cheap, what is left in the treasury of human value?
The way forward requires more than finger-pointing or blame game. Families must teach young people that self-worth is not measured in selfie on all the social media or turning their private parts to a public part. Also, Parents should reduce or avoid pressurizing their children (especially female ones) in terms of family economic needs and other responsibilities that could put heavy burden on them. Schools must build media literacy before social media builds ignorant society that is heading to self-destruction. Faith and community leaders must speak louder than influencers. And governments must pressure tech companies to design platforms that elevate ideas, not just bodies. Decency and legal ways of earning livelihood should be embraced and celebrated openly by all stakeholders.
Nakedness as currency may buy attention in the short term but the profit society makes from this trade is delusion, while the long-term effects and debt-measured in dignity, values, and mental health implications is dangerously high. If attention is the new gold, then perhaps it is time to ask ourselves, are we really rich in influence, or just bankrupt in morality and humanity?
Abdul Muhammed is a Public Policy Analyst.
