The downside of technology : Alert sounded for parents
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: May 07 , 2014 -

Sit in protest at Thoubal Mela Ground against circulation of a denigrating graphic of a 15-year old school girl on a social networking site on April 20 2014 :: Pix - TSE

Like any other thing, technology comes with its baggage of nuisance value and the rapid stride that the Information Technology has made in the last decade or two is not an exception.

All the more reason for parents, guardians and elders of the family to keep a hawk’s eye on the activities of their young children whenever they log into their computers or open an account in any of the social network sites like Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter etc.

The recent uproar raised in Thoubal against the deliberate act of superimposing the nude body of a woman over the face of a young girl by an errant teenager is a case in point.

Another instance that has come to light is the harassment and the accusations raised by a husband against his wife, with a video clipping on the mobile phone, where the faces have been blurred but the bodies are not.

Scary and at the same time detestable. According to a report published recently, more than 20 percent of Facebook account holders are fakes.

This should tell a story, a significant story of how some demented minds are out there to prey upon unsuspecting young people, especially young girls.

Probably it is the alarming trend of misusing the internet that constrained an Advocate to file a petition in the law court to ban all pornographic sites on the net in India.

That the Government has a different take, with reasons, on this is a different matter but this is a reflection of how the internet can be misused and abused at the cost of innocent youngsters, especially the girl child.

Pornography has always been there, maybe as old as the oldest profession in the world, but the manner in which it has entered the four walls of one’s home so easily is a matter of concern and apart from ensuring that their children and wards get the best education that the globalised village has to offer, parents need to be on their toes always to see what their children are up to whenever they log into their computers or lap tops.

The emergence of smart phones with all the dos has also made the issue more complicated to deal with.

Here we are not talking about the hackers and the most wanted people in the list of cyber criminals, but about ordinary people who can take on a totally different avatar once they enter the world of internet under a veil of anonymity and prey upon unsuspecting youngsters.

So far Manipur has seen only two such cases, but there are certain to be others, which have been kept under wraps and in the absence of a well defined cyber law or which describe what are cyber crimes, there is all the possibility of things going from bad to worse.

All websites on the internet have certain rules and regulations, such as the permissible age of the person who wants to open an account, but in the absence of any solid mechanism to determine the age of the person, it is impossible to keep track of all those who have opened accounts on the numerous sites that the world of internet has to offer.

As noted above, pornography and adult materials predate the onset of internet by centuries, but what is to be noted here is the easy accessibility to adult contents on the internet.

With search engines a dime a dozen now, one does not need to be a nerd to zero in on one of these sites. All the more reason why strict vigil is needed from the side of the parents and guardians.

Our suggestion to all the elders in Manipur is, do not gift a smart phone to the kids before they attain the age of 18 or 20.

Keep a close tab on their activities on the internet and keep a strict time table on when they can log in and if impossible monitor their activities on the computer/lap top/smart phones.

With the world literally living up to the adage of a global village, the need for parents and elders to be on the alert is felt all that more.