'Many guys walk up to us and say do you want to see'

When freedom is unrestrained and consent is not respected trouble inevitably follows says writerjournalist Jyotsna Mohan Bhargava in the introduction of her new book Stoned Shamed Depressed An Explosive Account of the Secret Lives of Indias Teens HarperCollins IndiaBhargavas book comes close on the heels of the Bois Locker Room case that made headlines in May this year The private Instagram group where teenage boys from prominent South Delhi and Noida schools sent objectionable and morphed pictures of minor girls many known to them and talked about gangraping them had left both parents and teachers rattledThe scandal though barely came as a shock to Bhargava who has spent the last year negotiating the world of Snapchat Instagram and WhatsApp in order to investigate the lives of young adults from urban India In the process she came face to face with the parallel lives they livemdashone offline and the other online The latter is a complex web of horrors where sex bullying and drugs are commonplace Her own motivation to write the book was an incident involving her daughters bullyingWhile she assumed that her stories would revolve around late teens her research led her to middleschool battlegroundsmdashtween is the new teen Challenges for kids these days start as early as eight in some instances even earlier she says in the book Not everyone is vaping or is necessarily a cyber bully but in the words of a psephologist these are trends And in a country that is aspirational it all filters downSelect excerpts from the bookSnapchat has the biggest culture of sending nudes says a girl in Class 12 I would say over 90 per cent of the girls around me in school will send stuff They will screenshot it on an android videos on Snapchat have a limited shelf period and no one will find out There have been parties where friends have recorded and circulated in a group I was at the mall the other day and some boys I know were standing together and laughing They were watching a nude video of a girl in our class There is complete insensitivity and lack of empathyAnother boy adds Instagram is easy to hack We all know our friends logins So we just click on Forgot password give our own number and get a onetime password OTP on our phones That is all it takesWhy do children across urban households feel the constant need to belittle even their friends by maliciously intruding on their privacy whether by hacking accounts or viewing videos without permission Whether it is a smartphone or an Instagram account why is status quo never enough Is privilege the big curse for our children First they are doing this for fame says Rishi Dwivedi an ethical hacker People like Rishi hack into computer networks to ensure safety and to flag any wrongdoings So if you have more than 10000 followers on Instagram I will hack your account delete all your posts and make it my account with the same followersSecond many people on Instagram are buying accounts with many followers Teens with not enough money of their own hack an account sell it to a party and buy some cool gadgets with the money Rishi who has even reported on Aadhar leaks says the shenanigans of the teens attract him and others of his ilk simply because it is challengingMy Instagram accounts were hacked twice recounts Avni an illustrator Once when I was sixteen it was sold to some aspiring influencer Then two years later another account was deleted completely after being hacked Later I found out that it was done by a guy who had asked me out and I had said no She says that she lost forty pieces of her art and was so traumatized that for weeks she wondered if she had lost the ability to be creativeJyotsna Mohan BhargavaRishi says hacking social media accounts is the most common thing teens do in school to fit in Girls I have spoken to have talked about getting into other students social media accounts just to make themselves look more appealing Pushing the digital boundaries whether to show off or fit in are par for the course Seventeenyearold schoolgirl Jessica has also had her Instagram account hacked by her classmates and wears it like a badge of honour Many hacking victims dismiss it as a rite of passage in schoolmdashyou arent relevant if your account hasnt been hacked at least once Officially the minimum age to have an Instagram account is thirteen But kids barely ten years old have one or more accounts The general trend is to have at least twoIn decades past it was aspirational to want to become a doctor or an engineer maybe more for the parents than the child himself but today it is about getting more likes than ones best friend Inhibition has also gone out the door Nude pictures are carelessly forwarded on WhatsApp or uploaded on other social media This leads to one of the biggest dangers on social media strangers especially adults preying on teenagers Jessica says I have had people tell me to send nudes try to force me to meet them date them or have sex with them hellip and these are random people who found me on Instagram Ironically she calls herself a loner I have two accounts and both are public I dont like to keep them private as they are simply for funDespite the setting up of the National Cyber Coordination Centre by and large cybersecurity remains an unorganised sector in India Most feel the countrys laws are inadequate to handle cybercrimes that go beyond the conventional But crime in that intangible world is more explosive than we realizeIndian cybersecurity laws only cover copyrighted content says Rishi There is nothing to follow government makes statements about digitalism but as usual only on paper He remembers an incident of crosssite scripting or XSSmdasha type of hack that bypasses users to other contentwebsitesmdashof the official website for the state of Arunachal Pradesh on 29 June 2019 When you opened the site adult advertisements appeared in the subdomain and the hacker gains your IP address Four months have passed the hack is still there speaking in November 2019 Rishi was confident he could give countless instances of such laxity seconded by other experts That leak was finally fixed but November was also the same month that Rishi brought to notice another hack this time on the government website of the Regional Specialized Meteorological Centre for Tropical Cyclones He traced the hack to Indonesia and informed the authorities They acknowledged his information but even five months later the site remained hackedWhere do enthusiastic yet immature children stand with their barriers of walls made in cyberspace With greater freedom comes greater accountabilityhellip or so it is said but it may not be that cut and dry for those who are not just dabbling in the cyberworld The 2017 data released by the National Crime Records Bureau released only in October 2019 showed that within two years cybercrimes in the country had almost doubled Unreported crimes could make the numbers significantly higherSexual exploitation and harassment ranked at the top Data three years later is anyones guess but if we still need convincing that readily available and affordable internet pornography is not just what the Western world is watching we have enough evidenceThere was a time when hastily scribbled pieces of paper were sent through a network of hands to crushes Now nothing needs to be said or writtenmdasha frontal nude photo will do the trick Like the girl in Class 8 who was randomly chatting with boys from other schools on Instagram and Snapchat many students say the constant socialising between students of different schools has complicated matters further and soon shared some intimate pictures with them The ending was true to script she was blackmailed for all to know In earlier times identifying a person was easy but now people can have a fake online relationship for even a couple of years until they build up enough trust to get something they can blackmail with says cyber psychologist Nirali BhatiaShe was once told by a blackmailer that male victims were preferred because they pay up women only cry Another child was blackmailed for her nude photos that she sent through Snapchat and was petrified enough to have sexmdashat the age of thirteenmdashwith the boy in return for him not sharing her pictures Sharing nudes on Snapchat is as casual as that app making their pictures disappear within minutes However screenshots or even a recording made from another phone can bypass this feature and make these images permanentBut what makes girls take nude pictures to begin with Perhaps we dont need to play 13 Reasons Why to guess Doing so makes the girls feel more confident about themselves says Karishma who has counselled plenty of girls after their nude photos leaked They are so obsessed with wanting to feel good that it all seems okay Meera dabbled with exposing her nudes for precisely the reasons Karishma talks about She was fourteen when bedridden while recovering from a surgery she started chatting online with another girlmdashor so she thought They exchanged similar stories of adverse circumstances and before long the other person had convinced Meera to share her nudesIt wasnt too long before the blackmail started ndash it turned out that she had been catfished and had been chatting with a guy all along I thought it was something different to do I was at home and this was a feelgood factor especially since I was recoveringA girl hanging out with the seniors sent a nude photo to a guy who was two years older his friend leaked it I think most students our age in schools are aware about the risks of sending private pictures through social media even if it is something like Snapchat that a majority of students believe is a safer medium says a former student Yet the show is on the road FOMO isnt just about missing in a selfieDo boys do it too In high school it is very common for guys to share nude pictures of classmates says Annika a student of Class 12Its not consequential Many guys just walk up to us and say do you want to see They could just as well be discussing the cricket score So we need to be teaching our daughters that its advisable to keep your clothes on and your passwords safeCyberbullying is sad but to a large extent is unavoidable shrugs another boy You got to do what you got to do is the teens message in a bottle Sometimes the bully could be closer homeExcerpted with permission from Stoned Shamed Depressed An Explosive Account of the Secret Lives of Indias Teens by Jyotsna Mohan Bhargava published by HarperCollins IndiaCatch up on all the latest Mumbai news crime news current affairs and a complete guide from food to things to do and events across Mumbai Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updates MidDay is now on Telegram Click here to join our channel middayinfomedialtd and stay updated with the latest news