THE CYBER CRIME

I remember playing with dolls and kitchen sets when I was a kid but when I see my cousin growing up she hardly play with such things which used to be the most precious possession to me during my childhood. Instead of playing hide and seek and santholia, she plays temple run and subway surfer, instead of talking about a dancing doll she talks about apple i-pad !! With each passing year it seems trend has changed.  Teens and kids are crazy for gadgets and especially teens are so much fascinated with the idea of socializing that they often forget that somewhere is the boundary which they must not cross.

Face book, twitter, instagram etc are the most common social networking sites popular among teens. Having an account on a social networking site fill them with a sense of pride and not having one is an ultimate moment of embarrassment. This is just not enough, they socialize with unknowns and easily swayed about the way they portray their lives to them may be true may be not. Moreover they use acronyms and code words that are alien to their parents, a mishmash of letter-and-number codes, crunched words that look straight out of a secret mission code. Codes like “PIR which means parent in room” , “MIRL which means meet in the real world” , “ WYCM which means will you call me ?” etc.

I don’t deny socializing with people help us groom our personality but teens vomit out every intimate detail about their lives online not realizing that putting their private lives online can go a long way in harming them emotionally. There is a risk of cyber snooping and online bullying by hate groups. It’s shocking that teenagers easily put out information about themselves on these social networking sites for random strangers to see , moreover to keep it a secret from their parents they display it in codes . They are dragging themselves away from their parents whom they must be closest to. They are going deeper in an unreal world of denial and away from a real life which could result in an identity crisis.

Parenting and education can play a critical role in determining a teen’s online life. Nuclear families, peer pressure, neglected pre-teens and lack of engaging social interactions are prompting many to take their lives online. Social media is the substitute for what used to be time spent in offline social interactions. The need of the hour is to wean teens away from the cyber life and make them aware about their physical and mental growth which is almost at the halt.  They need to understand that there exist a world which is far away from the world they are into, only then they will be able to compete here.