Coimbatore: A first year girl student of B.Sc in Coimbatore posted a picture of her sipping hard liquor along with her friends on WhatsApp last year. A few boys in her class, just out of spite, passed on the picture to the girl’s mother.
“The mother came and took the girl back home. And she never turned up at college again,” says a student and family counsellor, Dr G. P. Godhanavalli.
She counsels at least 2,000 college students every month. And most of whom are hooked to the Big Facebook and WhatsApp obsession, she says “Mostly the engineering college students I come across are falling into the trap of virtual love affairs. Many students from Arts and Science colleges are addicts of exchanging each other’s photographs on Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.”
For the youth, posting pictures of themselves on the Facebook has turned into a fashion statement. “They are so addicted to posting pictures that every time they do something, they have to take photographs rather than enjoy what they are doing,” explains Dr Godhanavalli.
In the past three years, there has been a 10 per cent increase in cases of young girls falling into the Facebook and WhatsApp trap, says Dr Godhanavalli.
If parents sit and talk to their children, give them company, stop fighting or abusing each other in front of the child, do not practice any domestic violence and stop consuming alcohol, such incidence could be reduced, she says.
For Swathy Ravichandran, a B.Tech student in Amrita University, the day begins and ends with WhatsApp greetings exchanged among friends and relatives. She joined Facebook when she was in class Nine. Recently, she has joined Instagram and is a frequent user of WhatsApp.
“I only go to Facebook when I am bored, have no one to talk around,” she laughs.
V. S. Raksha, 22-year-old studying MBA at Dr. GRD College of Arts and Science uses Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and very rarely LinkedIn and Hike. She joined Orkut when she was in class Eight and later in class Nine she joined Facebook.
“It was fun those days, we were curious to get introduced to such tools. Making friends online and sending messages to them, sharing our status, updating where are we now, where we are headed next, how is our mood, getting to learn new things on various topics like science, technology, philosophy etc.”
She was introduced to LinkedIn by her teachers once. “I joined LinkedIn just to update my education and career profile. I heard that it helps in getting the right job, gets us connected with scholars and experts. It even helped me in one of my projects on biotechnology as I came across a research paper.”
She uses Instagramm to share photographs. “Not all the photographs can be shared on social networking sites as I have many relatives who keep an eye on my every activity.”
But Raksha’s parents are worried after the suicide of a young girl in Salem who hanged herself after her morphed, obscene photograph appeared on Facebook.
Jerold Philip, an MBA student at Dr GRD College of Arts and Science, starts his day reading Facebook posts, checking WhatsApp messages and shares at least four photographs on Instagram every month.
“But I am not addicted to the FB or WhatsApp,” he asserts.
