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OP-ED SEPTEMBER 23, 2022 | The Indian Eye 16

Social media likes, hate and

the NATO game

Views and opinions from the top commentators in Indian media
A
study of American college
goers, conducted around the
time of Facebook’s staggered
rollout in US campuses between 2004
and 2006 (it was thrown open to the
general public in 2006) shows what’s
been widely apprehended for years
– regular use of social media has a
pronounced negative effect on men-
tal health. Scoping out the research
for current times, researchers also at-
tributed 24% of the jump in depression
rates in the US over the past two de-
cades to Facebook use. The US CDC
had found that relatively stable suicide
rates among 10–24-year-olds between
2000 and 2007 had shot up 57% be-
tween 2007 and 2017. India also tells
a similar story. There were 43,000
victims of suicide in the sub-30 age
group in 1991, which rose marginally
to 45,000 in 2006, but then saw a near
50% rise to 67,000 in 2021. This is the
time social media usage spread rapidly.
There’s much worse. Last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi meets Russian President Vladimir Putin (ANI)
a leak revealed Facebook had kept
secret for two years internal research and broadcasting, Anurag Thakur, — with television channels leading outcome of which will phenomenally
suggesting its Instagram app made stated that the pursuit of a narra- the pack — plays a principal, regres- affect world politics and fundamen-
body image issues worse for teenage tive of polarization has undermined sive, role in the poisoning. tally alter the world order. For Russia,
girls. While Indian authorities take the credibility of the media. Truth -- Editorial, The Telegraph (India) the struggle is no less than its survival
great pains to criminalize addictions and representativeness, Mr Thakur as a civilizational state, while for the
of many kinds, social media in many added, were the kernels of journal- Russian roulette US, this boils down to the preserva-
ways is a worse menace. Facebook’s ism. The apex court has been even tion of its global hegemony — the
poor track record in filtering out more forthright in its censure while oscow has decided to draw “rules-based order”.
hate content and fake news, Twitter’s responding to a clutch of petitions out the United States into The fact of the matter is Wash-
seeming helplessness in face of fake against the venom spewed on screen. Mthe open from the low-cost ington never accepted Russia’s resur-
content and fake accounts, all social Describing the visual media as the proxy war it has been waging against gence in the post-Cold War era. Its
media employing scandalously few “chief medium of hate speech”, the Russia on Ukrainian soil throughout agenda remained consistent through
content checkers – all of this adds up Supreme Court has stated that de- the past quarter century. President the Chechen insurgency in the Cauca-
to a real and deepening 21st century bates on television channels played Putin’s speech on Wednesday under- sus in the 1990s, the dismemberment
problem. Governments need to think an instrumental role in the vilification scored that this is an existential strug- of Yugoslavia, NATO’s eastward ex-
beyond the usual regulations. of communities, adding that such tox- gle and the Kremlin is determined pansion since 1999, and the color rev-
ic content came in diverse forms and to defend the Fatherland, no matter olutions in Georgia and Ukraine, cul-
-- Editorial, The Times of India
had a devastating effect. The bench what it takes. He explicitly warned minating in the coup in Kyiv in 2014
Hate TV has also stipulated that till a law is Washington, London and Brussels masterminded by the Obama admin-
put in place, it would be inclined to that Moscow “will certainly make use istration whose point person was the
he media in New India have of- set some guidelines. of all weapon systems available to us,” then vice-president, Joe Biden. That
ten been ridiculed as a poodle The stinging rebuke from the in the period ahead. agenda is to encircle Russia with hos-
Ton the lap of the ruling regime. highest court and the observations of The obfuscations in the Western tile states under the NATO banner.
The media’s docility is, however, not the union minister are well warrant- narrative — this is about aggression, -- M K Bhadrakumar, The Indian Express
a certificate of its benign character. ed. There has been an unprecedent- national sovereignty, UN Charter,
There is a dark underbelly that has ed strain on India’s inclusive body democracy versus authoritarianism, Every week, we look at what the top
been brought to light, once again, politic that has corresponded with etc — are no longer sustainable. commentators in the Indian media are
by criticisms from two ends of the the Bharatiya Janata Party’s political Pared to the bone, a titanic power talking about and bring to you a slice
spectrum. While addressing an event, ascendancy and it has been proved, struggle looms ahead. Both sides are of their opinions and comments
the Union minister of information time and again, that the visual media preparing to fight tooth and claw, the

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