Opinion In the era of social media and warmongering, what the young need
India and Pakistan have agreed to a ceasefire. Other conflicts rage around the world, where childhood is shadowed by the silhouette of guns and weapons. The time now is to speak in a voice that assures
The Senate already approved the school cellphone ban in principle earlier this year, but made several changes that were put to a vote late Tuesday in Chile's lower house of Congress. (Credit: Pixabay) My fingers had been sifting through the internet around the midnight of May 6, when they arrived at a reposting of a black-and-red poster. It invited a plethora of questions, including those related to its credibility. Operation Sindoor was underway. It was still late at night. So, the internet revealed stray images with little reliable reportage. My mind was taken over by anxiety, the first thought being, “are we heading to war?”
The next morning, air sirens blared over a Delhi neighbourhood. Residents, it seems, had been impervious to official notices, and the anxiety was palpable. Some stared at the skies imagining silhouettes of military jets. It was only when an official outside the residential complex announced that it was a civil mock drill did relief return to the worried faces. The children trotted back to their homes.
The city suddenly seemed to operate in distinct contrasts. While the military operation seemed celebratory for a large section of people, chaos crept up on some social media handles. Some youngsters took to reporting, advertising a successful military operation. Some came up with pro-war narratives, while others cited humanitarian concerns over a full-scale conflict. Over the next four days, several of my peers were glued to mobile phones with updates of drone attacks and ceasefire violations. Social media became a source of information and exchanges, at times leading to fear amongst the younger section who now rely primarily on it. The effect of using technology extensively has led to cognitive and behavioural modifications within this section, as social psychologist Jonathan Haidt noted in The Anxious Generation.
Not a day went by wherein one couldn’t find an Instagram story without people sharing literature surrounding the ongoing hostilities. Worse still, all this took the form of diatribes, or opinions. Some of this literature had merit, while others were either misinformed or even perniciously charged. Information exchanges by 19 to 21-year-olds even led to occasional hate mongering. At times, the exchanges degenerated with some interlocutors questioning the other’s right to freedom of speech. These newfound “mobile journalists” who also became social media activists began to claim that they were better informed than those who held the government accountable — the media and the civil society.
Debates also began to rage in family WhatsApp groups, and amongst friends, some of whom had travelled all the way to Delhi to give a postgraduate entrance exam. The idea of escalation between the two countries by itself was not devoid of sordidness and fear, but the social media epidemic of information warfare left a young pandemic surviving generation more uneasy.
A Pakistani friend who recently graduated with a degree in political science from a reputed college in London started a new social media handle “reporting” on world affairs. The more our country pushed on the agenda of Operation Sindoor, his reportage increasingly became acrimonious. He relied on reports focusing on Pakistan’s side of the story, often veiling his country’s real position under a narrative that tried to highlight supremacy vis-a-vis India.
When I tried to gauge people’s thoughts on the matter, several gave a communal angle to interpersonal dynamics; some feigned ignorance. There is beauty and vulnerability in friendships, some that transcend borders and socio-political fragilities. It struck me: Would I ever be able to approach my friend with the same ease as before? The relations between India and Pakistan are riddled with hostilities and anxieties. Should they affect personal relationships? Or is there space to navigate the situation together?
When I was growing up, my grandparents narrated experiences of a blackout — they had to hide in trenches in case of air raids or cover windows with dark tape to prevent light from passing through. A hostile socio-political environment often leaves its marks on relationships and can leave many desolate. Imagine treading through a barren and arid rubble, a land which has no light gracing its surface, malodorous with ashy smoke, burnt bodies, with its floors painted red. The writer Annie Ernaux has pointed out that more fearful than the disappearance of physicality is the disappearance of thought.
As mere mock air sirens made us anxious, I chanced upon questions asked by kids whose families and homes were bombed in Gaza. The list was presented by the Palestine Trauma Centre. Some of them are: After we die, will I hear your voice? When I die, will they put me in a grave with my mom and dad? Why do they always bomb us? When a missile hits us, do we feel pain or die immediately? Do the Israeli pilots who bomb children have children? Every day you say that tomorrow war will end.
While the neighbours have agreed to a ceasefire, the relationship between the two continues to be uneasy. Other conflicts rage around the world, where childhood is shadowed by the silhouette of guns and weapons. The time now is to speak in a voice that assures, especially the young ones.
The writer is a student of Writing MA, currently on a leave of absence from the Royal College of Art in London
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