The ethical use of social media

A popular government school is now under scrutiny for a leaked video involving a student and several teachers. Social media had been abuzz with this incident, some justifying the actions,  and some going to the extent of extracting faces of people in question and basically adding hay to the fire. It should be understood that these female teachers have families of their own involving their spouses and children. Therefore, by sharing their intimate details on social media, it would create a situation that would cause them much humiliation in public. Many pages known for creating memes had had a field day, making memes and various other posts to gain more views and reach. But all these trends show a harmful trend of online violence. The situation may have been different had the incident involved a female student and male teachers. On many occasions, social media users have made use of such sensitive incidents to promote their pages and to basically influence algorithms. One user complained that his entire Facebook newsfeed was filled with posts relating to this incident for at least two days. Therefore, rather than blindly using social media, it is important to have some limitations and ethics. What if this incident had happened to your own son, sister, mother or wife? Would you have shared posts, their images and acted in a way that violated their privacy? Therefore,  one needs to understand that there is no real ‘thrill’ in sharing such sensitive and irrelevant subjects on social media. 

Aruni Fernando 

Moratuwa