Laishram Ranbir
Imphal, August 20: The boom of social media is a boon to the people; but with the massive scale popularity of online communicating platform among the teens happen to raise the eyebrows of various social scientists since the past few years.
Social networking sites empowered to communicate among like-minded groups or people across the globe in a virtual world. Taking advantage of this empowerment, some youths are found using social media platform to outburst their happy moments, anguish and frustrations. But to perverts and pedophiles the sites are their best tool to influence their morale and look for prey without revealing their identity.
While surfing the social media networking site- Facebook, suddenly I bumped into a group photo uploaded by a youth from the state on the wall of his seemingly fake profile. The photo shows four teenage boys enjoying their days at Imphal War Cemetery, situated near Chingmeirong here. Two among the four boys were seating on haunches upon the Commonwealth burial stone of the martyrs of the World War II situated at the war memorial place, while one was seen with a live cigarette and showing his middle finger in the picture which is popular among his Facebook friends.
‘If you waNa know aBt me rule no
1. U giv godM #F**K
2. I give U my # D**K jus lik a once in A #Blue moon—with..’ reads the words posted along with the photo on the wall one Edw..d Pu.k S…ma.
The proclamation of this young Facebook user and his peers talk about the way how they could have make use of the popular online networking site? Such Facebook-isation of life and ‘look at me’ culture among the Facebook and other social media users may damage the mental health of the youth in the long run. With the reportedly increasing cyber crime rate in the state, the pro-active role of cyber crime branch of Manipur Police Department is highly felt in the state.
On top of it, the war cemetery, which is considered as a holy and important place to many families of II World War heroes turned into a favorite hangout place for lovebirds and dumping ground for tourists as well as neighbor. Owing to lack of manpower, the staffs of have also left the place at the mercy of visitors.
