By Khalid Mazhar Qureshi

A parent came to me, quite annoyed, saying “how can I stop my kids using facebook?” continuing “I have tried all but my kids just don’t stop using it. Everything is being affected: their education and real social life. They stay away from me into a world with which I am not fully aware”. This was indeed a tough question and I couldn’t answer it but it made me think about it. Is digital social media inherently that bad? Or is there any flaw in our approach?

A social experiment was performed in 2009 by DARPA dubbed as— A Network Challenge, in which they spread ten big red balloons all over the US. The task was to spot those balloons in teams in 15-days at a prize of $ 40,000. The task was virtually impossible to accomplish for a single person or less connected group.  To their surprise the prize was taken away in 5 days by a team. This proves the power of social network.

If the same teams were living 20 yrs back would they be able to find balloons in a span of 15 days in third largest country? Unfathomably difficult! Digital Social media is a revolution of collaboration and information sharing—it empowers ordinary people. Let’s forget what happened in Egypt and Libya, consider the case of fourth graders in USA, who were very inspired about environment after reading “The Lorax” written by Dr. Seuss. When they heard that Hollywood is making a movie on the same story they went to the movie website excitement. Only after learning that the site is missing environmental themes, the fourth graders challenged the Universal Studio and set off their social network by filing a petition on Change.org to include environmental themes. They gathered 57,000 signatures and, in this way, fourth graders got their way against the Hollywood giant.

Despite having formidable strength, this media is severely looked down upon by parents and teachers alike. In many schools social networking sites are forbidden territories and discussing about them during school hours is a taboo. It is a big criticism on educationists that they were slow to adapt News Papers when they were first introduced then they were slow to embrace internet and now this fast and vast expanding internet social networking.

Already fistful of approximately one billion users, the digital media is still relentless and growing exponentially. It’s deemed as a main engine for global village. Social media is acting like a crucible where people of different race and cultural backgrounds are amalgamating and being unified as one digi-nation. Rapid social communication updates people about the latest information whether it is related to shopping, current affairs and education. They know more alternatives and exact price of a certain item. This helps users become smarter in their real life. So by not allowing children to use it openly, are we doing justice? Are we not furthering the gap between real life and the life under teachers and parents? And in this way, are we not making children more rebellious?

In October, 2010, Phoebe Prince, a high school student hung herself because of cyber bullying. In another accident, a Rutgers University freshman committed suicide because his friends dubbed his sex video and streamed it online. There may be several hidden cases around the world which will keep popping up in future. In social media bullying is a common phenomena and the statistics is quite shocking. A Consumer Reports survey conducted in the US in early 2011 reveals that
“One million children were harassed, threatened, or subjected to other forms of cyber bullying on Facebook in the past year”

In a paper entitled, “Poke Me: How Social Networks Can Both Help and Harm Our Kids,” Larry D. Rosen, PhD, professor of psychology at California State University, found that Teens who use Facebook more often show more narcissistic tendencies while young adults who have a strong Facebook presence show more signs of other psychological disorders, including antisocial behaviors, schizophrenia, mania, depression and aggressive tendencies. Facebook can be distracting and can negatively impact learning. Studies found that middle school, high school and college students who checked Facebook frequently achieved lower grades and had lowest retention of what they read.

The issues of morality also arise with the use of digital social media as Noam Chomsky once said in an interview, ““[I] think internet social network erodes normal human relations. It makes them more superficial, shallow, and evanescent.”  According to Steven Strogatz, PhD, a professor of applied mathematics at Cornell University, “The distinction between genuine friends and acquaintances is becoming blurred. Users are spending time maintaining relationships with people they don’t really care about.” In a recent study out of USC, brain scans showed that volunteers needed at least four to six seconds to process stories of virtue or social pain in others. “It takes a certain amount of time to fully experience complex social emotions,” says the lead author, cognitive neuroscientist Mary Helen Immordino-Yang. Heavy reliance on the rapid intake of certain information—especially in younger, developing minds—could have consequences on our morality. It could also be “a whole new source of unhappiness,” says Strogatz.

But the thing is social media is well into our lives. Current generation love social networking and want to use it and will use it no matter how smartly we try to stop them; they will always find a way to use it. It has become an irreversible process. If we analyze anti-social media research it is standing on one reason —“frequent use”, isn’t that “frequent use” of everything is bad. As old adage goes: ‘excess of everything is bad’, too much watching of TV induces sleep deprivation, too much study does not take you anywhere, too much drinking of water may harm your kidneys and etc. However, my caveat is that we should not accept any new popular thing on reflex action but this media has passed its time of caution. The only way to deal with it is to change our side and accept it. Think about it if parents, relatives and teachers are added in the social network profile of their children/students then it will minimize the chance of being used in a negative and obsessive way. Change of side argument is historically proven for positive results.

Our real world is very rough and cruel but we still send our children outside homes for study or for all sorts of thing. Some fall prey to malicious stuff and some not, those who don’t is because their parents and teachers inculcated values in them. We now need to inculcate our values in their digital lives, they need simple and honest advices like the one President Obama gave to 9^th graders, “I want everybody here to be careful about what you post on Facebook because in the YouTube age, whatever you do, it will be pulled up again later somewhere in your life. And when you’re young, you make mistakes and you do some stupid stuff. ”

Mobilink develops content-filtering solution to reinstate BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS)

Mobilink has developed and implemented an innovative content-filtering solution to reinstate internet services for the BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS).

The initiative by Mobilink allows subscribers to fully access the internet, including social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, using their mobile devices.

Omar Manzur, Director PR & CSR, highlighted, “Customer satisfaction is an essential driver at Mobilink, and this content filtering solution is our initiative to restore full functionality of internet services for our valued customers, while maintaining PTA regulations.”

Foremost among these is the raging controversy surrounding Salman Rushdie’s scheduled appearance at the Jaipur Literature Festival, a saga that neatly encapsulates both the virtues and vices of the Indian polity. The gathering has fast emerged as the largest and most prestigious literary event in Asia, and it is a fine example of the soft power strengths India brings to the competition with China for influence in the region. This year’s installment attracted some 250 writers from South Asia and beyond (including talk show maven Oprah Winfrey, new age guru Deepak Chopra and Joseph Lelyveld, whose book on Mahatma Gandhi was greeted with a blast of invective from the Indian political class last year) as well as 70,000 visitors. Yet the imbroglio over Rushdie, who was supposed to be the main attraction at this year’s festival, has tarnished India’s credentials as emerging Asia’s brightest exemplar of democratic freedoms.

Rushdie, who was born in Mumbai to a Muslim family of Kashmiri descent, is the author of the 1988 novel, The Satanic Verses, which inflamed Muslim sentiment throughout the world and lead Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s supreme leader, to issue a notorious fatwa against his life. Concerned about the potential for upheaval among its sizeable Muslim population, the Indian government quickly banned the book, part of its familiar but disgraceful ritual of proscribing books that touch on sensitive issues or arouse passions in certain quarters. Rushdie, who continues to live under the threat of death, has traveled to India without incident numerous times in the years since, including an unannounced 2007 visit to the Jaipur gathering that is credited with putting it on the world’s cultural map.

But his headline participation at this year’s event brought forth a torrent of umbrage and threats. Muslim clerics started things off, including those at Darul Uloom Deoband, an influential Islamic seminary in Uttar Predesh, India’s most populous state which will hold legislative elections next month that many believe are critical to the survival of the Congress Party-led national government in New Delhi. Another seminary issued a fatwa calling for protests against the visit and a number of Muslim groups warned of “unprecedented protests” and burned Rushdie’s effigy.

Predictably enough, politicians soon took up the cudgels, many of them Congress Party leaders fearful of losing the allegiance of Uttar Pradesh’s large bloc of Muslim voters, who formed about a fifth of the state’s electorate. Ashok Gehlot, chief minister of Rajasthan, the northwestern state where the festival takes place, and a former general secretary of the All India Congress Committee, reportedly pressed the organizers to rescind their invitation to Rushdie and appeared indifferent to the threats being made against Rushdie’s safety. Chandrabhan Singh, head of the Congress Party’s Rajasthan unit, declared that “Rushdie has hurt the sentiments of many Indians. He must not be allowed to come to India.” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi, the party’s national leader, maintained a studious silence, while one of Singh’s Cabinet members pronounced that Rushdie’s “presence is not desirable.”

In contrast to the poltroon instincts of the political class, India’s boisterous media leapt to Rushdie’s defense. The Times of India accused the Congress Party of playing identity politics and argued that “by catering to such intolerance, the Congress has further contributed to creating an increasingly illiberal atmosphere in the country.” The Hindu called the affair “a national shame” and charged that “India has again betrayed its heritage of providing sanctuary to persecuted individuals and ideas, not to speak of its Constitution.”

If the saga had ended at this point, it would have amounted to an embarassment to the country’s reputation. Instead it unexpectedly morphed into an outrage against free expression. On the eve of the festival’s opening, Rushdie suddenly withdrew when the Rajasthan police warned him of an assassination plot being hatched by a Mumbai underworld boss who has close ties to the Pakistani security establishment. Media outlets, however, soon reported that the death threat was concocted by authorities to scare him away. When Rushdie made plans to address the gathering via video link, Rajasthan officials attempted to throw up new impediments. In the end, the video conference was abruptly cancelled by the venue’s owner following police warnings about violent protests.

In solidarity with Rushdie, four Indian writers at the gathering staged an impromptu reading of passages from The Satanic Verses, a prohibited act that drew quick police notice. Advised by legal counsel that they had unwittingly opened themselves up to criminal charges, the writers hastily departed Jaipur and, in some cases, the country.

Unfortunately, the Rushdie affair stands out for its prominence but not its singularity. Currently, the Delhi High Court is considering a petition that seeks to hold Google and Facebook liable for not censoring content that might offend the sensibilities of Hindus, Muslims and Christians. The judge overseeing the matter ominously warned that if the companies could not police their own sites, “like China we may be forced to pass orders banning all such websites.” Prime Minister Singh’s government has lent its imprimatur to the petitioner’s cause.

Late last year, Kapil Sibal, a Harvard-educated lawyer who serves as Mr. Singh’s telecommunications minister, likewise threatened to censor social networking sites for objectionable content (here and here).  Similar to the rhetoric directed at Rushdie, he argued that “religious sentiments of many communities and of any reasonable person is [sic] being hurt because of content which is on the sites.” Last June’s death of M. F. Husain, the most acclaimed painter of modern India, also recalled how he had been hounded into self-exile by Hindu nationalist groups incensed at his nude depictions of Hindu deities. Prime Minister Singh called Husain’s passing in a London hospital “a national loss” but he did nothing to dampen the mob culture that caused Husain to spend the last years of his life outside of India.

Indeed, over the last two years, India’s illiberal tendencies have been in particular bloom:

• A fictionalized biography of Congress Party supreme Sonia Gandhi was banned;
• Government officials helped put the kibosh on plans to make a movie based on Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire, a non-fiction book that sheds light on Jawaharlal Nehru’s furtive relationship with the wife of the British Raj’s last viceroy;
• An outcry organized by the family of Bal Thackeray, a Hindu nationalist politician, forced the University of Mumbai to drop Rohinton Mistry’s novel, Such a Long Journey, a finalist for the prestigious Man Booker Prize, from its English-language syllabus;
• And Arundhati Roy, a perennial bete noire to the political establishment and a Man Booker Prize-winner for her 1997 novel, The God of Small Things, was charged with sedition for her remarks on the Kashmir dispute.

All democracies are continuous works in progress. But this year’s Republic Day reveals just how far India still remains from the ideals of free expression.

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