Staying awake with net!

Staying awake with net!

There were number of occasions, when I spoke in favour of using social media specially to the youth. To make my position strong, I would often give the example of my own experience with social media. Years back, when I was doing a year of pastoral experience in Ireland, I constantly used social media to reach out to the youth. It was a very handy tool for me and it bore many fruits. But recently, I had encountered an incident, which made me to think the use of social media, special among the youngsters. 

Changing the profile picture of Facebook!

It was after repeated reminders and comments, finally I decided to change the profile picture of my Facebook account. I had kept the same picture for almost six years. It was around 10.00pm (in Italy) and 2.00am (in Bangladesh) when I signed in to change the photo. Within 5 minutes, just before signing out, I found there were more than 30 people who reacted to my profile picture. Just out of curiosity, I checked the list of people who reacted to my profile picture and to my great surprise, I found almost all of them were youngsters and from Bangladesh. Naturally they were all students too!

I signed out and put off the lap-top. I thought of all these youngsters who were 'awake' with net. Their parents must be peacefully sleeping just in the next room, thinking their dear children were asleep. They must have gone to bed with dreams for their children that one day their children would fulfil their dreams!

I was sad because I knew many of these youngsters personally. I knew the dreams of their parents for them. I also knew that they were not doing anything useful work on-line.  

I am not very active on Facebook, forget about being famous. I use it only for sending messages and avoid anything on screen. I wonder if a ‘passive’ person like me gets 30 likes within five minutes at this odd hour, what about the people who are more active!

It is very alarming to see many young boys and girls wasting their precious time with social media when they are supposed to study and sleep. At this age, they are supposed to have dream for their life and keep trying to fulfil them. But on the contrary, they are destroying the dreams of their parents, forget of having their own dreams for future!

Perhaps it is right time for parents, teachers, leaders, elders who are peacefully sleeping, to get up and make sure our children stay awake in fulfilling their dreams…