The social network

HYDERABAD: A city parent shares a nightmare, one that unfolded in front of his eyes. A bunch of nine-year-olds were hooked innocently to a video game which challenged them to take pictures of an animated fashion model stepping out of her car. Harmless? Well, the challenge was not just about simply taking pictures but clicking the model's undergarments as she stepped out of the car wearing a teeny-weeny mini skirt.The score predictably depended on the number of clicks each player got of those peek-a-boo moments and the bunch feverishly clicked the mouse to beat their other friends at the game.
If it was 'indecent' exposure that had the parent worried, city schools are battling another fear __ the safety of students on social networking sites. A known school has even started holding awareness sessions on Facebook realizing that the growing urge among their adolescent students to be "liked" by their friends on the social networking site was a serious problem. They found that many students had taken it as a challenge to add as many friends as they could on the site to flaunt their popularity to their classmates. Much like the 'click-the-model' game, even here the whole fascination for the site was the "score"__ that of the number of friends.
If much of the urban adult world is balancing a parallel virtual life with the real, children too are doing the same. Just that they are not always able to do the balancing act. Parents who are themselves active on social networking sites say they find it difficult to deal with the virtual lives of their tech-savvy children.
"I can't look away when my daughter is on Facebook. There are times when complete strangers send her friend requests and I fear she might just add them if I am not around when she is on the site," says S Neha, mother of an 11-year-old. She says that access to internet may have made doing project works easier but it has made parenting a tad more difficult. "It's a double shift job. I not only have to watch out for her when she is outside but also when she is at home and using the laptop. She has mixed age group friends on Facebook and I am forever worried that some adult joke makes it to her wall," she says, adding that she doesn't discourage her child either because most children her age are active on the net and her daughter too must keep up with the times.
The overriding concern among parents for their child's safety in the virtual world has led to some serious and unhealthy situations. Child counselor Zenobia Rustomfram says there have been some instances of parents creating fake ids of themselves and adding their child as a friend only to figure out his or her activities on Facebook. "It is a fictitious world and for whatever reason the parent has done this, the role model is poor," Rustomfram says.
Parents further note that the expectation from the real world have changed given the fast-paced virtual lives they lead. "When you are constantly exposed to television and video games their mind moves very fast. They seek activity at a speed at which they work and activities that take longer to yield results do not interest them," says a parent.
The virtual threat of impacting young minds has only added to the existing concern of many years: television. Programmes on the idiot box which enjoy a huge fan following for children are incidentally turning out to be the most harmful as well. Dr Shailesh Pangaonkar, a practising child psychiatrist and director of Nagpur-based Central Institute of Behavioural Sciences (CIBS) says he has had many cases of children who suffer from panic attacks and invariably all of them are hooked to a late-night thriller serial. He cites examples of teenagers who come to him with their parents complaining of his fear to go to the bathroom alone in the night. Dr Pangaonkar says he sees a pattern in these cases of anxiety __ late night TV viewing habit and the complete inability to turn off the television. What is more worrisome is the early onset of adult-like behaviour. His suggestion is monitored television viewing for limited hours (see box).
Child psychiatrists like Dr Pangaonkar say that there has been a five per cent rise in the average intelligence of children and demand a schedule that is more creative. In the absence of one, television or the virtual world are for them the quick getaways to fill in their free hours at home. "It's more of comfort seeking," he says.
The doctor has a point. Children TOI spoke to said that while they indeed enjoyed spending time on the internet or watching television, they said it was also because of lack of company. Some complained about no place to play in their residential complexes while others pointed out that they had no company for outdoor games.
The result is for teachers to see. A teacher of a kindergarten school says that parent-teacher meetings invariably end with teachers asking parents that the child cut down on some particularly aggressive shows on television.
But observers of the TV-internet trend say that apart from behavioural issues, there are other concerns as well. "There is a lot of dumbing down that's happening," says Akhila Sivadas, executive director of New Delhi based Centre for Advocacy and Research, saying that the new-age addictions have wiped out other creative options of spending time. Activities such as visiting the museum are no longer on the family's agenda, she says.
School counselors say they are worried because neither is the exposure to television or the internet really helping. A counselor shares that the school she works with had a student exchange programme where children were allowed to speak to each other on the phone and made buddies on the net. But when they met face to face, their inhibitions were the same. So chatting up students in another country did not exactly break the barrier nor help in improving their social skills. Child counselors and psychiatrists say they get cases of children who are socially introverts but express themselves better behind the comfort of a computer screen.
"We cannot cushion away our children from television and internet exposure but there is a way of monitoring, on how to use them effectively," says Rustomfram.