Nowadays, most of the people in the hills have access to the internet including the children. At least a member of a family has a phone with internet access in almost every household. Our life has become a lot easier because of the internet. We can transfer money online, through internet banking, app banking, make video calls via different apps when we miss someone.
Most of the people have their accounts on social networking site and so many other apps to counts. This has made us visible to everyone around the world.
Being fragile, delicate if you become visible to the world, you would be the target of evils in the societies. We hear a lot about the bad things happening around these days.
Most importantly, we need to safeguard our children from the evils in our societies. The NGO’s and the schools organise programs and seminars to make the children aware of the delicate issues like the environment, human trafficking, child abuse, drug addiction, etc. In the older days, our parents, relatives, and the elders visiting our home used to share their ideas, experiences to make us aware of lots of things.
Even though the schools have taken a responsibility to safeguard from the social evils, the parents and guardians need to guide the children gently. Some children are rebels, they only hear soft advice and others can be advised easily.
We know, the world was never a better place for the innocents and adolescents, and it would never ever be. With the emergence of Facebook, video calling apps, Whatsapp, etc., we stay connected to each other regardless of our distance. However, these things are used by the evils of the societies to trap the young and innocent for their benefits, making a life of innocent miserable.
Some of the children might feel good on getting treated well in the beginning, but such people will show their real face later on. Our children should be made aware that the strangers on the social networking site pretend to be good at first.
We need to teach our children that the strangers on the social networking site can do anything to win trust at first – Especially the stranger from places far away. But they will reveal their evil intention at a victim is together.
The social networking site doesn’t have any such security feature to check the characters, morals, intentions of any person by looking at their profile. No one would be able to know about the true nature, characters, and profession of a person in the real world.
The thing which scares us most is the innocent, young people falling in the traps set by the evil minded people in the physical and virtual worlds.
Our sisters, daughters, mothers are the most vulnerable, but even men or boys could fall in traps set by a person with wrong intentions.
Facebook doesn’t allow a person below 13 years to create an account to ensure the safety of the children. However, all the people above 13 years are not sensible adults. The fraudster, traffickers, and hackers don’t look at the age, but they find out the weakness in the victims.
They are curious about almost everything. They are learning to differentiate between good and bad, but aren’t much capable enough to recognize the people with good and bad intentions.
Our little children are becoming victims of the evil of social media. The first and foremost thing to do by the parents and guardians is to stay alert and keep eyes on the activities of their children. The elders need to educate the children about the pros and cons of the internet, social networking sites, apart from educating about other things.
Social networking is a vast platform. You can find different types of people from different corner of the world belonging to different cultures, races, and countries; most importantly of different age groups and professions.
The first time users are unaware of the darker aspects of the internet and social media. It could be exciting for them to get attention from people around the world.
We need to give time to our children and listen to them, watch their activities and routine. Or else, if they are able to find some strangers online to listen to them, or talk to them about all their sorrows, likes, dislikes, etc., then it could be dangerous.
Traffickers, fraudsters, hackers can fool anyone once they get to know about the weakness in a person. To share our likes, hobbies, or the things close to us with everyone is always dangerous; those things could be used against us anytime.
We may not be able to stop our children from using internet applications to connect with people, definitely not. However, the main thing we need to do is to create awareness to protect them.
The victims are not of any specific category; they could be poor, rich, innocent, or educated. If the human traffickers want to trap the innocent young girls, they will use all the possible means to make a fool of themselves. They may chat for a long time, send gifts from different cites to win the trust of a victim. Nowadays, sending things to someone is not difficult like before.
The schools and the NGO’s organise the seminars on human trafficking to protect our children from the evils. But most importantly – the parents, elders’ should be aware of the misuse of Social Media.
Younger girls are the easy target of criminals. The miscreant could make use of fear, poverty, the child’s desire to learn new things, explore new places, etc., to trap and victimize.
We cannot guarantee the authenticity of the things posted on Facebook, Instagram, etc. Some people post the picture of their costly car, houses, good look picture to lure the victims.
When our children are in danger in the real world, we may be able to rescue them. But the internet is the darkest place to be in the world right now for the innocent and the young ones. Most of us are not aware of our child activities online, which is really very scary. I don’t mean to say that we should be too strict. I mean to say, we need to create awareness and watch them. Maybe we would be able to save our people from falling in a trap of such dirty minded criminals.
To the conclusion, I am not saying that the internet and social Medias’ are the places for evil to reside. We need to spend some time with our kids and talk about good and bad things, let them know about the good and bad people. Don’t invoke fear, rather create awareness in the heart and mind of the young generations.
The school is the place where we send our kids to learn good things and develop awareness against bad things. However, our responsibility doesn’t stop there. We may become tired and restless after working for the long hours in our farms, offices. We can do anything to save our hard earned money, protect our valuables. It is not easy as said, but I believe we need to protect our children, our coming generations from the evils of the societies based far and near to us. The new generations are smart, but foolish sometimes because of their age. The matured and experienced people should guide our children to follow the right path safeguarding themselves.
Writes: Atish Subba
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