Facebook and Manipur

Akshay Arambam *

Mark Zuckerberg - the name rings a bell in everyone's mind. The social media giant FACEBOOK is everyone's favourite now. Facebook is making its presence felt in the market gradually with the takeover of Instagram, Whatsapp and recently Oculus. Also, Facebook is going to use satellites, drones to spread the Internet. It is not just a mere social networking service but a big player in the market.

Life is an open book now with the advent of facebook. What started as 'Facemash' in Harvard is a world's sensation now with the name FACEBOOK. No one actually knew that this social networking service would take the world by storm. We can easily differentiate the life before facebook and after facebook. It has affected the social life and people's emotion in many ways. It has strengthened the connectivity and widened the social life of people.

Now, Facebook boasts of more than one billion active users. Even though it is widely appreciated all over the world, there are criticisms as well. Various psychologists have criticized saying Facebook can have negative psychological consequences. But here, we will discuss how the people in Manipur use Facebook and the social media's effect on the people there.

It is not a study or a research that I did but I got drawn to this issue because of the recent incidents I came across on this particular social media. Every coin has two sides - the pros and the cons. But, it seems the negative effects are more in the case of our people. Personal attacks, emotional blackmail, cyber bully and maligning someone's image - you can find all these in Manipur. The situation has worsened and it is going in a very disturbing direction.

It is very common these days for a person to create a page or a group and shower all the hatred and angst against a person. It is definitely a cyber bully and goes completely against the morality. Every Tom, Dick and Harry gets involved in moral policing. No one is given the right to destroy someone's image and defame him or her.

It has been observed that teenagers are mostly affected, though it involves almost everyone. The young kids are distracted, and are exposed to these kinds of activities. What is also shocking is the nature of parents who rather than protecting their kids against these, are taking pride in their behaviour while knowing that their kids are exposed to things irrelevant to their age.

There was one page created a year back attacking a Manipuri girl based in Bangalore and questioning her morale and character. Some personal pictures were posted on the page and was given a completely different version out of the pictures. Recently, a page was dedicated specially to malign a girl from Imphal. Everyone took the opportunity to give an opinion on the girl's character.

Few years back, there was a big case of someone uploading intimate pictures and videos too. Social media is used in such a way that respect and privacy are nowhere to be seen. Character assasination is quite common these days. It is not the public to decide how a girl or a boy is by making their personal space open to all in the social media platform such as Facebook. Pages on Facebook like Imphal East Vs. Imphal West, Caste X Vs Caste Y etc create bad blood among the groups involved. It might have started off well, but at the end it turns ugly.

I suggest the Cyber Crime Cell should be an active player to catch the culprits in short order. There should be a stringent punishment. There should be steps taken up and awareness given to all regarding cyber securities and cyber crime. Cyber crimes should be treated seriously as any other crime. All these activities need to be stopped before it gets dirtier.

We all should respect someone's privacy and to act within the limit. The authorities should make people realise that these things are not accepted and will not be tolerated. Even the parents have a big role in this. Parenting should be done properly and the children need to be taught from a very early age.

Abusing someone or pointing out someone's mistake doesn't make us any wiser. The wise is the one who learns from the mistakes and achievements of someone else's. We all should utilise the technology for our own good. Misuse of anything is not good. Facebook is a very good social platform to bring people closer. Please let us not spoil it and make it a dirty place with all our evil activities. We should all take the initiative for this and stop all the wrongdoings. Live and let live.