Media Release

Mangaluru, Mar 31: The Mount Carmel Central School, Maryhill conducted an enriching session for the students of Grade 9,10 and 11 on the "The Impact of Social Media" on Thursday, March 30.

The resource person was Manoj Fernandes, lecturer in the department of business administration at St Aloysius College and a well-known speaker and professional Master of Ceremonies.

Manoj began the talk by giving an insight into how dependent we have become on our smartphones and computers for work, school, our personal and social lives, and with the pandemic the number of internet users also increased. Students shifted to online learning. The internet became a significant part of their lives and so too did social media – Instagram, facebook, twitter, snapchat etc which has impacted the children to a large extent.

The speaker while mentioning that social media offer great convenience and connectivity also demonstrated its horrors. These days students tend to lose their focus from studying and instead enjoy browsing on Social Media. Some become addicted to it, gaining ‘followers’ and ‘likes’ becomes an obsession to many. He also made the students aware of how the concept of a perfect life on social media can be fake through a video presentation.

Another ugly side of the internet the speaker made the students aware of was cyber crime and cyber bullying. Giving the audience examples of different incidents, he illustrated various cases of cyber crime and proposed several precautionary measures that can be employed to protect oneself from cyber crime. He asked students to be aware of privacy concerns and cyber security.

Finally Manoj told the audience that “Not everything one sees on social media is true and that what we see online should not be a standard by which we should live life”. At the end of the session, Benita Rodrigues of Grade 11 proposed a vote of thanks.