In this episode of South Central, hosts Dhanya Rajendran and Pooja Prasanna first discuss the Karnataka government’s plan to ban teenagers from using mobile phones. They are joined by policy researcher Tara Krishnaswamy, child psychologist Sama Adil, and Adhira S Magesh, a teenager who is a Karate black belt holder and enthusiastic baker.
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Dhanya starts the discussion by asking Adhira if a ban will really work on teenagers. “I don’t think it will work. Several apps have age restrictions, but I have seen friends circumvent this in their own ways,” she says.
Sama says that the effects on screen-time on teenagers are very apparent, but banning is not a solution. “When COVID hit, we digitalised education and childhood. Now we tell the same kids that we are going to take away their phones. Yes, there are problems with excess screen time, but when adults are also on the phone perpetually, we cannot expect children to follow digital discipline,” she adds.
Pooja recalls how, in countries like Australia, such plans were done in a phased-out manner. “The platforms were also asked to restrict children below a certain age, and fines were imposed in case restrictions were broken on the websites,” she says.
Tara says that it is one thing to say minors spend too much time on screen and another to look at what they are watching. “The problem with social media and other content is that there can be manipulation, like how the manosphere draws adolescents in. Even The Kerala Story, though we know it is fiction, influences us, adults. So for children, there is misinformation, manipulation, and children are so much more susceptible. Unlike a movie hall, this is a fully unregulated medium. We have not designed checks and balances on the digital world vis-à-vis kids, and now we are proposing to ban access completely. That cannot be a solution,” she says.
Dhanya asks if some kind of regulation is important. Tara says it is important to have some restrictions on how much of it can be accessed and by whom.
Adhira says that platforms like YouTube and other video-based platforms also have a lot of information. “For example, I learnt a lot of baking from YouTube. It gave me confidence to consider baking as a career path. Cutting that much information off might isolate children and deprive us of growing,” she says. When asked what she thinks are problematic things that should be banned, she says apps that allow sending anonymous messages are an example.
Dhanya asks if Adhira’s peers are tired of social media or the internet. “I think parents get annoyed with kids scrolling. But I don’t feel tired of it. I don’t think content on the internet has as much impact as adults estimate,” Adhira says.
“In the last maybe two months, at least 10 parents have reached out to me about their children’s phone addiction. Parents want to put the onus on the counsellor. Counselling cannot be mistaken for parenting. So parents also need to focus on developing a healthy relationship with technology,” says Sama.
Adhira says that banning phones will not improve communication between teenagers with parents. “We might feel even more frustrated, in fact, decreasing communication even more,” she says.
Tara says that though a reaction from policymakers is needed, we cannot resort to blanket bans, considering how children also use phones for a lot of academic reasons, to ensure their location is traceable to elders, and so on.
When asked what a solution is, Adhira says it should be more about specific platforms and not banning phones.
In the second part of the discussion, the hosts delve into the upcoming film The Kerala Story 2 and its polarising politics. The hosts are joined by professor, writer, and activist NP Ashley.
“This is a sure recipe for disaster to the republic. The Republic of India stays afloat on the equality promised to people of all faiths. The biggest problem is the lack of ability to conceive political opposition to certain violent fanaticism as different from demonising one whole community. This is dangerous, and we need to understand that when the Union government and its leadership endorse such a film, they openly embrace propaganda,” Ashley says.
Pooja recalls how, even with the first movie, when confronted with facts, the goalpost was changed. “Even here, even as the incidents are not from Kerala, the title has Kerala, claiming it is a ripple effect of what has been happening in the state. It is like what is happening in Kashmir,” she says.
Tara says that this is not about defence or offence, but about how this politics is being propelled further. “This will not be restricted to Kerala. It will come to Tamil Nadu and other states as well,” she adds.
Dhanya says that there is a clear connection with the RSS here. “An interview says the ideation was done with an RSS organisation, and the movie is also tied with a man named Manoj in Kerala, whose Yoga Centre allegedly aided in torturing women who fell in love with Muslim men. If these fascists are taking a leaf out of Hitler’s Germany, even there, at one point, the movies were so bad and propagandist that people went to theatres and hissed. So they banned hissing. But here, they have learned to make watchable movies,” she says.
Ashley says that there are excellent democratic reasons why you can support this, but then you go to a point of no return. “Hate speech must be differentiated from freedom of speech. Hate speech is not speech at all. This will require an assertion of Kerala sub-nationalism in a certain way, and once it becomes a fight between a particular regional identity and a national identity, this is cynical, dangerous, and destructive,” he adds. He also quotes examples from Jignesh Mevani’s campaign in the Bihar elections and Giriraj Singh’s remarks about Jignesh being a Gujarati.
Dhanya asks what the end goal of peddling hate is for the right-wing. “There are so many political events happening around this hate, from altering history to polarising campuses and so on,” she says.
“The endgame is to militarise this conflict and unify them into one national, Hindutva identity. On the one hand, while we know that the responsibility on majority of sexism stems from patriarchy and is perpetrated by men, we do not think all men are bad or bar us from falling in love with them. The BJP-RSS understands this very well– they will, on one hand vilify the state, and then also appeal to various sections of the population to lure them to their side. Standing up and pretending to care for women in the Sabarimala context is an example of this dichotomy,” says Tara.
Tune in to these two charged conversations here.
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Audio Timecodes
00:00:00 - Introduction
00:01:15 - Headlines
00:09:32- Mobile Ban
00:43:49 - Kerala Story 2
1:19:57 - Recommendations
References
Who is converting to which religion in Kerala? The real ‘Kerala Story’ in numbers
Azim Premji varsity faces flak for not withdrawing police complaint against own students
Ayodhya of the South – A timeline of ‘time immemorial’
Ayodhya of the south: The Sangh’s southern rehearsal
How Sangh mobilised Thiruparankundram unrest | Let Me Explain 104 | Pooja Prasanna
Ground report: The organised Sangh mobilisation behind the Thiruparankundram unrest
Recommendations
Adhira S Magesh
Sama Adil
Tara Krishnaswamy
NP Ashley
Pooja Prasanna
Why Is History So Controversial in Today’s India? Romila Thapar and Namit Arora Explain
India vs Pakistan: What Ignited The Ongoing Conflict
Dhanya Rajendran
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
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Produced by Bhuvan Malik, edited by Jaseem Ali, written by Sukanya Shaji.