Alaul Alam :
It is no denial that social media platform benefits us in various ways but at the same time we are being negatively influenced. There is a long debate in this regard; is social media benefiting less than harming more? As the issue is controversial, it is tough to come to a conclusion but one thing is more apparent that the youths are becoming addicted to social media and facing dire threats in their life.
In Bangladesh differentsources say that there are 110 million mobile phone users. Again, over the years the internet users in the country has increased many times. Even the use of smartphone sets is increasing significantly amid the youths. A recent study has revealed its survey findings that 64% children have their own smart phones. The figure may be more than that as in the time of virtual education many parents have found no alternatives to provide their children smartphones to keep their children on track of new education paradigm.
Children usually pass many hours a day on virtual platform to attend online class. Apart from participating online class, many children have developed excessive engagement to online world. Obviously, the constant attachment to smartphones has caused many distractive to study. On top of that, they have been addicted to online gaming and watching aggressive videos.
Reports claim that most of the young people aged from 13 to 20 have a social media account in the country. The most popular social media platforms include Facebook, You Tube, Instagram, WhatsApp and Snapchat. Though Facebook has been the most common online social site, more often the users are misled by the harmful contents which are being shared online.
The findings of an online survey reveal that most of the users are put in an embracing situation when dirty contents are shared on social media. Most of the users strongly protest that the concerned of the social media need to take urgent initiatives to remove the toxic internet contents. Again, it is so frustrating when we see some malicious contents are not reported to remove,rather shared by manythat flood instantly the online sites and degrade moral and societal values.
Again, different times we see that online platforms become the fertile ground for misleading people with misinformation and fake news and rumors. Through many online sites people are experiencing harassment, bullying and terrorist propaganda. Even many may be trapped by the online hackers who exploit people in various ways.
It is obvious that the inappropriate contents of social media are harming the teens and youths terribly. The question may be pertinent to araise; are the online sites bothered about this? In most cases, they are hardly bothered. They are doing millions dollar business and some online sites have got skyrocketing popularity. So, do they really need to be bothered whether some contents go against the morals influencing negatively the teens and youths?
At the same time, can the parents deny their responsibility? It is often noticed that many parents feel proud to see that their children are capable of operating the modern devices but they hardly have any concerns that they are pushing their children into the potentially dangerous world of cyberbullying and pornography.
Again we see that there are many teens involved in unhealthy entertainment. Some internet-based apps such as TikTok, Likee and Bigo have caused a great blow for the youths. The youths have developed a great fascination to use these apps to show them special in the virtual world. Experts opine that these online apps are nothing educational, rather these are sending wrong messages to the society and culture in the name of modern entertainment.
In the country next to Facebook YouTube has been another popular online site. Things are more frustrating when we see that a group of unrefined people produce vulgar videos and upload these on YouTube. Though they are polluting the native cultural environment, the government hardly takes actions against them. The youths and teens go into astray to watch these vulgar films available on YouTube.It is very imperative to adopt policies so that the teens and youths are not affected with violence, obscenity or other mature themes.
Pervasive protests continue to control and filter the toxic contents served through the media. But harmful contents are still flooded on virtual sites. To address the harmful contents spreading through some popular online sites it is a must to cultivate the values into us. It is time to think how the youths can be saved from the misguided online contents. Family and society have enormous responsibilities to ensure a healthy environment for the youths. Again, more studies should be conducted how we can prevent the negative impacts of social media.
(Alaul Alam teaches at Prime University. Email: [email protected])
