Have Facebook friends become more real than real friends? Students from various schools debated this topic at St. Francis Xavier School recently. The event was the Frank Anthony Memorial all-India inter-school English debate competition organised by the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations.
The topic was announced an hour before the event and participants weren’t allowed to access the internet to gather material. The participating schools were Julien Day (JD), Delhi Public School (DPS) Newtown, Agrasain Boy’s School (ABS) and Welland Gouldsmith School (WGS). The host school’s team participated too, but at a different school. Aditya Dasgupta of WGS, started speaking for the topic and things heated up when Saptarshee Pal of ABS spoke against it. He elaborated on how some people assume fake personalities on Facebook and scam others. Aditya shot back: “Why blame the whole Facebook community for the wrong doings of certain individuals? ” Saptarshee responded: “Facebook leaves us vulnerable to crimes. It increases chances of getting scammed.”
Meghanshi Mustafi from DPS rose to speak against the topic and took everyone by surprise with her confidence. Divyanshu Shaw from ABS challenged her about why the victims are never blamed for being careless instead of the platform but she stated how it’s not possible for elderly citizens to adapt to technology. “Many senior citizens use Facebook to stay in touch with their relatives living far away. You can’t expect them to learn methods of protecting themselves on a platform where anyone can assume a fake profile and target them,” she reasoned. Shreejaa Bhattacharjee of JDS said introverts can speak to people freely on this platform.
“They feel free behind their keyboards and can express themselves,” she stated. “When opening up to an online friend, one doesn’t fear about the latter spreading rumours about them as they don’t even know their real-life friends and family.” Beware of fakebook As the debate came to an end, the moderator, Nikhil Biswas, who is an assistant teacher of the host school, opened the stage for the audience. The creative head of JDS, Brett Manuk, came to podium.
“I have two kids who think they are the advisors of god and know everything thanks to their access to the internet. I jokingly tell them that Facebook is Fakebook, as majority of what you find there is fake. In a world full of fakes, always be careful,” he said. Biswas shared his two cents too. “I have prosopobibliophobia, fear of Facebook. I find the portal to be like a fridge. There’s nothing new in it but you still keep opening it from time to time in search. A friend in need is a friend indeed and it’s real-life friends and not Facebook ones who show up in need so value them. ” He then moved on to announcing the results. Meghanshi Mustafi and Shirsha Sengupta from DPS were adjudged winners of this stage of the tournament and they secured their spot in stage II, to be held later on. The runners up were Adrija Mondal and Shreejaa Bhattacharjee from JDS.
Mustafi and Sengupta also won the best speaker and runners up speaker awards respectively. “The debate was challenging as we couldn’t research enough but fortunately, the topic was open to various arguments,” said Meghanshi. The judges included teachers from various schools and Ajay Chopra, secretary and administrator of St Francis Xavier School, was the chief guest.
“A lot of hard work went into this event but it was a terrific experience. We wait for the next time we get to host this,” said Mom Chattopadhyay, headmistress of the host school.