With ease of sharing, netizens can help find missing people

SOCIAL SCIENTISTS caution that before sharing anything on social media, it is imperative to register a case. IT IS also important to have discretion when seeking help on social media.

Social media for good was the hash tag shared by actor Farhan Akhtar when a 13-year-old reported missing on Saturday was found on Monday.

Social media can be a feasible tool to find missing persons with applications such as Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp being employed to spread the word.

With the ease of sharing information that these tools have in the form of likes, shares, retweets, forward, the word about missing people is reaching a larger geographical area, yielding positive results.

“The significance of any technology, even a simple thing like a knife, can be used for good things as well as bad things. It depends on human attitude on how you utilise the technology. All the social media platforms were created by people who suffered at psychological level and it was their compulsion to communicate even during dire situations that motivated them to come up with alternative solutions like Whatsapp. At the same time, if a person facilitating information is motivated to spread fear or negative information, this same medium can be harmful. It dials down to the mental framework of the user,” said Professor V. Yoga Jyotsna, Dean of Social Sciences at Osmania University.

Social scientists caution that before sharing anything on social media, it is imperative to register a case. It is also important to have discretion when seeking help on social media.

“Social media, if it is about children has to be done with caution. There are very old pictures of kids who have been found still circulating which may have serious implications and in the context of India where crimes against children are very high, we need to be wary,” says Ipsita Sapra of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences.

She adds, “In case of lost things, we need to use our discretion when posting on social media but when it comes to government identity and children, it is always tricky. Report it first to the police and then share it on social media as identities can be misused. Even though social media was created to connect people and is helping people to find things, it is disconnecting us.”