http://www.cybervictims.org by Dr. Debarati Halder
Come the exam time, the children become more concerned about
their studies... really? I have a different opinion this time. in one of my mid
-seminar chats with the participants I got an opportunity to hear the experiences
of Latika Saran, Ex Director general of
Police, Tamil Nadu. She told me about incidences of disturbing fellow
classmates through the social media profiles by young teenagers. Her
observation said, this is a new trend picked up by students to distract the
fellow classmates just before the examination starts. I completely agree with
her observation especially when I myself got to see several of such cases. Many
schools including sophisticated elite schools now have included direct teaching
methods through internet. Science, social science, maths and even linguistic
subjects are also made easy through several educational software. Gone are
those days when children had to be taken to field trips to make them understand just a fragment of a
portion of an entire science syllabus. Now field trips are additional ways to
make a child understand the whole problem. Computer and internet are working as
extremely beneficial windows letting the students visualise and realise everything . Students are
encouraged to have their own emails and social media profiles to get connected
to famous scientists, explorers, mathematicians etc through their own web pages
or social media pages. This is extremely useful since these children are born
in the internet era and they must learn to use the internet for good since
early adolescent period. Home computers and internets may give wonderful opportunities
to learn new things, solve problems together with the family. I have personally
experienced this when my daughter wanted to know the meaning of a particular
Hindi word; the whole family sat with her and learnt not only one word ( the
meaning), but various ways to use the word constructively. But this is not ‘all
is good’ scenario.
Young girls
often become completely shocked to see their “fake avatars”(I have explained the meaning of FakeAvatars in the context of online harassment in my article http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2270061) ; the shock turns
into nervous breakdown when they come to know that these were created by none
other than their classmates to distract them from their studies. Parents often
tell me that their children are increasingly becoming adamant to open new
Facebook profile or get connected to their friends through Twitter or Google Plus
particularly when they get study leave before the exams. Some students prefer
to share class-photographs with their friends through emails/chats after they
are reportedly ‘begged’ by their friends repeatedly. Further, I have also come
across cases where students get into online bullying during their study leaves.
Some students told me that to come out of boredom during study leaves they take
to internet games and they did come across several games which were ‘adult
types’ and they did not tell their parents about it. However, the appreciable
part is, they immediately restricted themselves from further going deeper into those
games as they said ‘we are aware of the dangers of these’. But not everyone is smart
like these kids. There are children who had severe fights with their parents on
the issue of using the internet ‘all by themselves’ without any parental guidance
during holidays sending the parents to panic camps ; the real world parent vs
child arguments did take off several days
of the peaceful home atmosphere which hampered exam preparations for the child.
Ever thought why such incidences increase
especially during study holidays? Mrs. Saran’s observation stands true with the
testimony of a few parents who agreed that some children intentionally call up others
to be online to distract them from their studies. How many of you readers
remember the scene in 3 Idiots when “Chatur” circulates racy magazines to other
hostel-mates during their exams to distract them? This silly prank-trend has an
upliftment through Information/digital technology way. Apart from this, I must
also say about one more incidence where medical students were caught red-handed
with blue chips in the examination hall some years back and it was found that
there was a big racket alluring the students to buy it; the intentional was not
to empower the younger generation by availing them latest technology, but to
sell answers to the right questions.
So students and parents, be aware of such trends. Internet is
a way of learning now. But do not use it to destroy the positive powers.
Wish you all best of luck for your exams.
Please Note:
Do not violate copyright of this blog. If you would like to use informations
provided in this blog for your own assignment/writeup/project/blog/article,
please cite it as “Halder D. (2014), “Beware examinees
