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'Tech giants must spend real money on media literacy in India'
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SME Times News Bureau | 22 Sep, 2018
To ensure smartphones remain a force for good, device makers need to
spend some "real money" on media literacy in India so that people can
take full advantage of the new technologies and learn to distinguish
what messages to believe and what not, says the author of a new book on
how the smartphone is changing the country.
"Media literacy
should ideally start from elementary level in schools," Ravi Agrawal,
author of "India Connected: How the Smartphone Is Transforming the
World's Largest Democracy" told a gathering at The American Center here
on Friday.
In the absence of such education, there could be
misuse of technology, as evidenced by several cases of lynching
incidents in India linked to rumours spread on WhatsApp, he said, while
participating in a discussion on the impact of smartphones and the
Internet on the Indian economy and society.
"Smartphones are
doing to India what the automobiles did to America about a century ago.
In fact, the power of smartphonoes in changing the lives of Indians has
been stronger than that of automobiles and electricity," said Agrawal,
who is also the Managing Editor of Foreign Policy magazine.
While
smartphones have opened new doors of opportunities for millions of
people in India, the transformative power of the device has not always
been for good, he pointed out.
"There have been intense
discussions in the developed countries on how smartphones have driven
screen addiction among teenagers which has been linked to depression and
other mental health issues. But such discussions are missing in India,"
he said, highlighting how the country is ill-prepared to deal with the
adverse effects of technology.
Agrawal's book, published by the Oxford University Press, has three parts: Opportunity, Society and the State.
"While
the smartphone has unleashed many positive changes, it has not been so
successful in breaking the barriers of class and caste in connecting
Indians to their fellow countrymen," said Agrawal who worked as CNN's
New Delhi Bureau Chief and Correspondent before joining Foreign Policy.
With
481 million Internet users (as of December 2017), India has the second
highest Internet user base in the world after China, according to a
report by not-for-profit industry body Internet and Mobile Association
of India (IAMAI).
Most of the people in India access the Internet through their smartphones.
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