By Anas Nilambur,
An elderly couple making the rounds of their relatives’ houses to invite them for the wedding of their daughter or son was a common sight in our countryside, not in a distant past. Carrying a small handbag packed with invitation cards, they would travel a long distance every day braving an adverse weather and unmindful of the difficulties in catching vehicles. A lemon soda from a wayside shop was enough to quench the thirst of the whole day. Besides, it was customary that the inviters were treated with light refreshments at each house they visit. The entire informal chat would always be followed by a brief formal sentence of invitation, “You and your family must reach before the ceremony begins”.
The advent of mobile phones changed the whole picture dramatically. Still the kith and kin, albeit reluctantly, attended the parties for which they were invited telephonically, though a cast shadow had started to hover over the warmth of their relationship.
As the technology runs at a faster pace, everyone is forced to run after it to keep pace with an unprecedented communication revolution. Now the invitation is made rather easy. You may simply keep three options to be ticked on your Facebook wall: ‘attending, not attending and may be’. You will receive the number of your guests within a short time. To a limitless extent, social networks like Facebook, Twitter, for a short period Orkut, yet to know about the Google plus and their ilk, render us a great deal of opportunity to register our opinion, to publish our views, to tell loudly the bitter truth in public, to question the authority etc. One’s likes and dislikes, views and arguments, which were unnoticed by others can be made public free of cost, at any time now! Needless to say that these social networks are of great advantages for businessmen, students, housewives, politicians, social and religious volunteers, and even for the jobseekers. According to Facebook, till July 2010 around 500 million active members of it from every corner of the world communicate each other requesting blood for a patient, collecting donation for a good cause etc.
Frowning and posing so many doubtful questions at a new entrant is a natural way of human reaction. Thus students and teenagers were strictly restricted from using mobile phone as well as internet to a wider extent until a few years ago in order to keep them away from the problems they aroused. The ‘threat’ posed by Tractor, Earth movers and Excavators are still enjoying a prominent part in our debates and discussions. Later on, all these complainants and campaigners are seen to be a part of this flow justifying that, being aware of the dangers these can be handled for good. Undeniably, a great majority make use of these sophisticated technologies with good knowledge of its pros and cons. But unfortunately the extent of the time we spend for creating this awareness has proved to be at the cost of many innocent lives.
Indeed, the dangerous pits in the social networks have also been known by all at the expense of many precious relations and precious lives. Wayne Forrester of Croydon in South London stabbed his wife, Emma to death, for a simple joke she wrote on her own Facebook wall about him. Cambodia’s 69 teenagers had to seek security from the police when their names appeared on a hit list of Facebook. These are only the tip of the ice berg. Let us overlook these types of incidents considering that it has been taking place in the farthest countries, already in our list of morally degraded. But how can we disregard the number of suicidal attempts of students in India being bullied on the Facebook? Recently many youngsters of our own neighborhood, those planning to marry, began appealing not to register any bad comment under their photos because they feared that many similar ‘harmless jokes’ lead to break more than a few marriage alliances or proposals even in our God’s own country. A couple of days back, a colleague of this writer shared her bitter experience from the social networking. While she was chatting with a good friend, she was asked to click a link sent by him, which she was told would show an informative video. But that click turned on her laptop’s webcam. Having suffered the humiliation of being exposed in her night gown, she no longer keeps a friendship with him.
London Metro reports, “Thousands of students join in social networking sites every day irrespective of age, race, country or sex. Though majority of them do it out of curiosity, most of them are found rampantly addicted to it and would even prefer to access this than dinner or sleep”. They rush to the internet cafes soon after their school hours to know that whether they are praised or noticed. Through this narcissistic approach at least a few get depressed in loneliness, get irritated and often get frustrated on their stuff. Many a parent cannot identify the reason for their child’s restlessness and loneliness being unaware of this new e-world.
Quite recently a noticeable development is seen in the profile picture of our girls that the image of bleeding heart, tearful eyes, flower with thorn, cute kids and celebrities etc. gave way to their own lively images from different angles. Literally this has brought an explicit change on the comments on their profile; a few of them read. “U’ r so cute, my fon No. is…………”. “ Ur beauty is awesome, my mail Id is…………….” However it is an undesirable thing for the parents, who unexpectedly happen to see it. Their girl may be expecting more comments, though she keeps a distance from commenting back. Many people still don’t know the reality that the photographs and other stuff can never be removed permanently from these sites; but it can only be hidden for our satisfaction. In June 2010, the Dubai Police Forensic Science and Criminology electronics Evidence director Rashid Lootha had warned those girls who kept their own photos as a profile picture, claiming that the crime of downloading photos and collecting private details for misusing, had been increased from 40 percentage to 70 within one year!. The BBC reports that social networks have been sharing private details of the member to dozens advertisers and companies that track what people are doing online. Facebook justified it telling that they would find new technology to limit the security breach. Precisely, our private profiles are not that private as we think in spite of the fact that those were accessed by our own permission.
This writing is not meant to create panic among the social network users; instead, it might open the eyes of our parents and teachers to the core issue and prompt them to monitor our teenagers, because social networking has become the first activity of the day for at least a certain number of students. One thing is unambiguous that this does not help the students develop their interpersonal skills and soft skills because they are only e-talking and not getting trained in how to talk in a real situation. They lose debating skills and public facing skills instead they are able to just e-face the public but not really face them. Many studies show that children of today have very poor handwriting and spelling skills due to texting and social networking sites, where they constantly type in the shortest possible text slang. Furthermore, this networking addiction gradually leads them to the problems caused by the virtual reality, such as hallucinations, dissociation, lateralization and retreat from real life situations due to the change in psychomotor performance.
Regrettably, we are one way or the other creating a new generation of claustrophobic, with poor English skills, making friends electronically, falling in love or breaking up with the hit of a button! Smiling and crying through emoticons! Can we ever dream of those old days to come back, where families and friends communicated through good old fashioned conversation?
(The writer can be contacted at [email protected])