Bangalore, Aug 9 (Inditop.com) It is not TV cartoons or an energetic game of football that is keeping Bangalore’s youth hooked – but blogging and social networking.
According to a survey by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s largest software exporters, youngsters in this tech hub top the chart in blogging and networking. And parents and teachers are a worried lot over the possible ill-effects of spending much time on this activity.
Students in the age group 12-18 in several cities across India have taken to blogging and social networking in a big way. But Bangalore’s Gen-Z is way ahead – with 66 percent of those surveyed saying they are active on blogging and networking sites, in comparison to the national average of 39 percent.
The TCS survey, the first of its kind pan-India study on the subject, covered 14,000 students, mainly studying in English medium, in Kochi, Coimbatore, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, Mumbai, Bhubaneswar, Kolkata, Lucknow and Delhi.
But parental pressure has made a few cut down on the time they are logged on.
“I was a regular blogger, till a few months back. My blog was about teenage angst and aspirations. Due to pressure from both my parents and teachers in school to stay away from blogging, I am not posting new blogs these days. For me blogging is a powerful channel to express myself and I love doing it,” Ankit Gupta, a student of Class 10 of a reputed Bangalore school, told Inditop.
He, however, resents elders restricting youngsters from networking on the web. The 14-year-old asserts that any kind of restriction on such “creative and communication” skills of youngsters would be harmful for their growth.
“Blogging is a great creative medium. There is nothing harmful in blogging. But elders fail to understand the point and are unnecessarily putting restrictions on children and their mental growth,” rued Ankit.
Teachers are not impressed with such arguments.
Princess Franklyn, principal of Bishop Cotton Girls’ School, Bangalore, told Inditop that teenagers these days spend a good amount of time on the net and were neglecting their studies.
“Most of the children in the city are spending a huge amount of time either blogging or on social networking sites like Facebook and Orkut. They are neglecting their studies. Moreover, many are falling prey to bad elements,” said Franklyn.
“There should be some amount of restriction on children using internet services and parents and teachers should monitor while children browse internet services,” added the principal.
Echoing Franklyn, Charles Noronha, the vice-principal of St. Joseph’s Boys High School, said there was nothing wrong with children being part of the web world, but there should be some restrictions.
“Children don’t understand what is good and bad for them. Thus elders should monitor children and guide them. Moreover, children should concentrate on their studies and sports for healthy growth, rather than wasting time on the internet,” said Noronha.
“The TCS Generation Web 2.0 survey confirms that today’s students are shifting their academic and social life online and embracing the digital world as true digital natives. This societal trend has important implications for parents, educators, policy makers, as future employers as well as companies and brands that want to sell to tomorrow’s generation,” the IT major’s CEO and MD, S Ramadorai, said recently commenting on the survey findings.
According to Rita Vijay, a mother of two teenage sons, due to the children’s dependency on technology, more and more of them were losing their ability to build inter-personal communication skills and fast becoming social outcasts.
“Children these days are becoming recluse of sorts. Technology is undermining their ability to communicate properly with elders and their peers. They have no social skills and at times they go into depression bouts and there is nobody to address them,” said Rita.
However, her son Sundar feels that blogging and social networking are part of today’s children life and too much restriction was not good.
“These are a healthy medium of communication and expression and such restriction is uncalled for,” said Sundar.
