Mohd Siddiqur Rahman :
Face book, an online social networking service, was founded on February 4, 2004 with its headquarter in Meno Park, California, USA by Mark Zukerberg, initially with his college roommates and fellow Harvard University students. In the beginning, the founder limited the website’s membership to Harvard students, but later expanded it to colleges in Boston area, The Ivy League and Stanford University. Gradually, it expanded to various other universities as well as to their high school students. Face book now allows anyone who is of 13 years old worldwide to become registered user of the website ignoring question of proof . In the span of only one decade, it has become so popular that its number of subscribers has already outstripped 1.3 billion and with more than 800 million using it daily. All classes: older people, different professionals, students of schools, colleges, universities and our pre-teens boys and girls have joined this virtual platform.
Nevertheless, Face book has received criticism on a wide range of issues, including its treatment of its users , online privacy, child safety and hate speech etc. Research found that this popular net working site can do more harm than good specifically to those who are still in school . In western countries there are cases like a male person of 25, posing as girl, solicited boy for harassment .Child porn cases are not rare . In our country as reported in the dailies: A first year student of HSC at Jahangirpur girls school and college of Naogaon district, aged about 17, killed herself on October 15,2014 after seeing her nude photo on Facebook. Police found that one of her acquaintances posted this photo of her for humiliation. Known and unknown scandalous occurrences that have happened to our beloved children and loved ones by this time, have obviously , given rise to a great concern among the parents, guardians and well-wishers. How to escape from likely apprehension of maladies need to be discussed elaborately. Firstly, we would like to discuss why our pre-teens and teens are so much inclined to subscribing this social website in large numbers despite of its multiple dark facets.
Children are fond of games and sports by nature ,but we are unable to facilitate them with enough space as play ground. We are virtually having them confined to a room of our homestead with some text books. They remain awfully busy with house tutors or tutorial houses to complete their daily lessons. Every well-to-do guardian wants their wards to do their best in all exams almost overlooking extra curricular activities.
Parents cannot afford time to socialize their children with dear and near ones as they remain occupied with various daily pursuits.
There is no library either at home or in the locality to spend their past time or holy days by reading interesting books designed for them by both indigenous and foreign writers. Monotonous life not liked by the children by instinct, rather want to break it out to explore something new.
Children are imitative, like to follow others irrespective of good or bad. Being immature, they are vulnerable to peer pressure. According to Dr. Larry Rosen, professor of department of psychology at California University- An important part of the brains of people ,under the age of 20s,are not complete. This is called the pre-frontal cortex and until someone reaches their mid-twenties, their nerve cells are not completely coated in an important material that helps them to communicate. Since this area in the front of the brain acts as the executive controller, it is responsible for our attention, decision-making, impulse control and more. This is why pre-teens and teenagers are prone to taking wrong and impulsive decisions in life.
Elder brothers, cousins and friends of neighborhood have already joined Face book , are often heard talking about selfies ,like, dislike, share, comments, postings etc. have positively aroused interest in them to flock them in herds . Observed, there is competition between the friends in increasing the number of friends ranging from 500 to 1000 above.
Now impacts of Face book may be illustrated as follows: To subscribe the Face book, children state their ages to 13 years to skip the minimum age requirements set by the authority. So the process begins with a lie. Regrettably there is hardly anybody to make them understand that they are adopting unethical ways.
Immediately after opening the accounts, children get hooked into the Face book, which harm their life style in the long run. When a child doing their home work, cannot concentrate fully to study as thought of checking and updating the status come up to their mind and interrupt attention. Addiction to Face book kills a lot of valuable time meant to be spent with learning, parents, relatives and physical exercise.
When children own accounts, they cannot limit activities to checking updates only but also start searching more fun leading them to various erotic sites. This results in addiction to them, always try to search the sites to find pleasure.
This is absolutely a matter of great concern because they are not mature enough to distinguish between the right and wrong.
There are some websites supplied with objectionable texts, videos and graphics that register in the minds of the children in the developing ages. When they mature, cannot delete the impacts and will be sustaining it through out whole life. Above all, they are receiving the wrong orientation about the world, said Tanzir Ahmmad Tushar, of Department of psychology at university of Rajshahi.
After observing about 300 teen agers from across the US, Dr. Rosen found that virtual social platforms have significant adverse affect on teen ager’s learning and academic development .
When Face book is a combination of known and unknown faces, they get indiscreet remarks at times from some one that hurt them badly. Some of them make very suggestive remarks and ask out for relationship, which he/she cannot share with anybody. Dr Rosen, in his study, found that constant networkers show narcissistic tendencies. Eventually some may suffer from schizophrenia and depression. Professor Tanzir Ahmmad tushar said constant checking of updates of friends and other information certainly creates impact on the users way of life .
By this time, researchers, social scientists, intellectuals and experts came up with their valuable suggestions to safeguard our beloved children from the hazards of Face book. Dr Rosen said it is important for parents to monitor their children and teenagers on social media as it is possible for them to be emotionally harmed by things that they see or words that are directed at them. Prof. Tushar said parents must know what their children are doing on the internet. Bonding with their children matters a lot to understand them and keep them away from harm. This can be done through combination of sharing among parents and children.
Child abuse is being battled in the western countries. Unfortunately, there are no effective mechanisms in Bangladesh to save the children from the malicious contents in the virtual platform. Prof Tushar said national identity card or birth certificate can help if it is integrated in the signing up process in Face book.
The government can play vital role in this matter to build mechanisms with the authority of Face book. Mr Tushar further suggested that Government take initiative to build a networking site specifically for children constituting educative and entertaining resources with strict monitoring.
However, ATM Monirul Alam, Commissioner at Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Authority Commission thinks that responsibility go to the parents to save the teenagers from the adversity of Face book. Parents should be more cautious about their kids, he says. Renowned Information Technology (IT) expart Mustafa Jabbar adds,” Awareness building is a must. At the same time, the government should be serious about this for the greater interst of young generation.
As general public, express our wholehearted thanks and gratitude to those who generously gave their valuable suggestions and recommendations for the parents and the government to raise our children effectively and make them good citizens.
(Mohd Siddiqur Rahman, Ex Country manager of Biman, Bangladesh Airlines, Frankfurt, Germany)
