Face the facts

Should Facebook be banned? Many school administrators say so; some teachers agree; some parents nod their heads approvingly at the suggestions, and most students are totally riled at the very idea of denial of what they practically regard as their fundamental right.

Which students? No, not those in government schools in various small towns and villages of India who form a majority, but the privileged ones, born in middle-class homes.

A middle-class child who is not studying in a school that is not “English medium”, or a “convent”, would be considered deprived. So are children who do not have access to the Internet.

Students use the Internet for various reasons, primary among them being browsing, communication, downloading and sharing music or videos, and gaming. They take a tremendous interest in social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Orkut.

Face the facts, you just can’t ban an activity because it has been misused by some. Social networking sites have taken off in India and while the Google-owned Orkut was the clear market leader, now, with 1.5 crore users, Facebook has taken the Number 1 spot.

Social networks are a technological bridge for people scattered by geography and economic compulsions. They allow them to interact and share each other’s lives. Talk to users and you will find them saying that their bonds have strengthened through social networking sites.

Any new social environment poses new challenges. You have the capability to instantaneously communicate with hundreds of your friends (an average user has 130). You could post something, or merely react to what is posted by your friends. The young demographics and the newness of the media give users a feeling of informality, and thus users tend to write as they speak. Here lies the catch-in the real world, often what we say is transient because it is confined to a small number of people, and also not meant for posterity. However, even if it seems similar on social networking sites, there is a vital difference.

You talk differently if you are chatting with few friends, rather than say 130 of them. On social networking sites, what you input goes to a large number of friends, what you write is more permanent, and sometimes can come back and haunt you.

Recent headlines in Chandigarh have reflected an incident in which some school students were suspended because of their social media infraction. One student had posted something negative about a teacher, and others had commented on it. When the comments were discovered by another teacher, action was taken against the students.

While no one condones the actions of the students who have used harsh, some even say abusive language against the teacher, there has been some controversy regarding the quantum of punishment. Some parents assert that the administrators react with excessive gravity. Criticising a teacher is nothing new, however, nowadays technology enables people to sometimes do it anonymously and what they say is long lasting and public, and thus attracts more attention than it would have if the incident took otherwise.

Worldwide, there are no clear precedents to guide us when such situations arise. In one instance, Syracuse University, USA, held students accountable for what they put on the Internet, and punished them for trashing their teacher on Facebook. A statement by the school said: “Criticism can be considered a matter of free speech. In this particular situation it was the content, and the content was considered as being reviewable as a possible violation of the university code of student conduct. The language and the phrasing of these Facebook postings were extreme.”

However, in another instance, a Pembroke Pines Charter High School, Florida, student posted about “the worst teacher I’ve ever met” after apparently clashing with her English teacher over assignments. She took down her post a few days later; meanwhile, a number of those who viewed it responded with remarks defending the teacher. She was disciplined two months later.

Her case went to court, and a few years later, a judge ruled: “It was an opinion of a student about a teacher, that was published off-campus, did not cause any disruption on-campus, and was not lewd, vulgar, threatening, or advocating illegal or dangerous behaviour.” Thus she won the case.

However, there have been many incidents of students who have been suspended over blog entries that mentioned drinking alcohol, or pictures showing them drinking alcohol, or indulging in other acts that had been specifically proscribed by the school administrators.

There is a lot of difference in the way the young people and adults view social networking sites. For the young, they are just a mode of expression. They expect their peers to participate in it and use it extensively for all kinds of social interaction, including communication.

What they don’t realise is that their privacy is nebulous at best, that what is posted has a nasty way of coming to life at a time when it is most embarrassing, and even though they may not like it, the best advice that can be given to them is “If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say it all, certainly not on Facebook or Orkut.”

Parents and school administrators too need to loosen up a bit. No one should overlook the use of abusive language, or any other inappropriate content. However, many a time, youngsters are just venting off steam. The context should be looked into and only serious violations punished. There is a strong case for providing counselling and teaching children dos and don’ts about using social networking sites. Children face various threats from people who abuse social networking sites, and thus they need to be sensitised to these dangers. As for abusive language and other issues, many Indian parents have found a solution by making their children accept them as ‘friends’ and thus keeping an eye on their cyber adventures.

Banning Facebook for schoolchildren is simply not possible. It is worth considering that an exponential growth is expected for such sites, with the increasing number of people accessing social networking via their mobile phones. By 2014, the number of mobile social network users in India is expected to be 7.2 crore. This does not include the people who use the Internet through their computers.

Social networking sites are a reality. What we need is greater understanding from both the users and the administrators. We need to have fun, and at the same time, we must remember that we are responsible for our actions, whether we are online or off line.

A shorter version of this article by Roopinder Singh was  published in the Lifestyle section of The Tribune on 12 October 2010,

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