Next Gen

Its been a while since I wrote here but I was planning to write about this right from the moment when I came back from my Panipat trip during holidays on 15th August.

I went to my Mausi’s to meet all of them and spend time together, especially, my cousins who are 9 and 8 years old. When I reached there and enjoying my evening tea my 9 year old cousin asked me “Bhaiya, are you on Facebook?”. I was amazed by this question from a 9 year old girl and I intentionally said no to see her reaction. To this, the 8 year old cousin said “Bhaiya, I know you are lying, this is not possible”  I asked him “Why this is not possible?”, he said “you are a computer engineer and you work in a computer company so you must be on Facebook” with the agreement nod of his sister. Well, I didn’t asked her why she gave such logic but I refused her about the fact that I am on Facebook.

After some time, I was resting in guest room and  of course I was checking my mails and Facebook, both of them came and caught me on Facebook. They said “Dekha, humne kha tha na ki aap jhooth bol rahe ho. Bade log kehte hein jhooth nahin bolna chahiye aur aap jhooth bol rahe ho, aapko sharam nahin aati jhooth bolte hue..” I was clean bold on this and said “Aisa kuch nahi he….this Facebook is not good things for children like you… children should not use it”. The younger one said “Why Bhaiya, we have our friends on it, we can do lots of things”. Whoa!! these little ones have their friends too on Facebook.

Once they saw that I do have a Facebook account, she asked me to add her on Facebook, She typed her name in the search box and showed me her profile. I asked her

Me: Who is this girl in your profile pic?

She: Kya Bhaiya, you don’t know her? She is Hannah Montana!!

On a serious note,I was not aware who is Hannah Montana till the moment she told me.

Me: Nahin, I don’t know who is she?

She: Bhaiya, Hannah Montana comes on cartoon network and she is Miley cyrus who is also a singer in real life.

Me: Oh, now I got it who is she but why you have not put your original pic in your profile?

She: Bhaiya!! don’t you know that girls do not put their original pic on social networking websites?

OMG!! From where she is learning all these girly stuff which actually is correct.

Me: No, I don’t know, why so?

She: I don’t know, one of my friend in school told me

Me: Oh, that’s why you put Hannah Montana’s pic. But, from where you come to know that she is Miley cyrus? Did your school friend told you?

She: Yes, Hannah is my favorite and I searched about her on Google.

Now, there was no point in acting strange about Google in front of these two so…

Me: Google…hmm… so you know about using Google.

She: yes Bhaiya,we use google.com to search about our subject.

He (who was silent): I searched about an essay topic which my madam gave me as Homework using google. It is very useful.

I was quite amazed to see how much these two know about the things, both of them know how to operate a laptop and use Internet.Now, I realize why parents in US and Europe needs Parental control in almost every media related things.

Their Mom called them downstairs, after 5 minutes I saw that she accepted my FB friend request and after a minute, I got a gmail chat invitation (she must have got my gmail id from my FB profile page), I got a video chat incoming call from her after I approved her chat request. Both of them started giggling from downstairs and started mocking me with the photos of me and my fiancée which I uploaded in my FB account.

One of my other cousin who is 9 years old has started using the modern lingo on the FB like she used to write

so what as so wat,

for sure as fosho,

Happy Birthday as Hpy Buday

Ouch as aawwcchh.

I wonder whether she has changed/modified these spellings in her mind as well or it is just for the online purpose (I don’t think so).

I was thinking that how fast this generation is going by using all these facilities and how and where they would be after 20 years.

Shining India needs Parental Controls too.