Do you remember an incident that buzzed over everyone’s phone a few years back wherein we came to hear about the feud between a food delivery agent and a lady, where allegedly she accused the food delivery agent of hitting and punching her? The incident was in Bangalore city. By now you must have recalled.

Well, at the very first instance most of the people thought and some even concluded with judgements that the person at fault was the delivery guy itself, following which news articles started flashing on our screens, and the social media pages were surrounded by memes, pictures, and videos as well. Numerous articles got published. It became a topic of discussion for all.

But amidst all this chaos what was left unattended was the TRUTH!!

The content we watch, hear, or read online influences our minds in some way or the other. In this indispensable era of the digital world, no person can keep a bay from digital services. Digital services in the broader context mean various platforms provided to us digitally like for example the news channels, the online portals, Youtube, and social media platforms like Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, Twitter, etc. The extent to which these digital platforms or services impact our minds and polarise the truth over an issue is something to be thought of with some grave importance. 

So, what is the Digital Trial?

Digital Trial is nothing but the trial or the drawing of conclusions over issues pertaining to others’ life based on a half-truth or to say more aptly only a tiny version of the truth presented by these numerous digital platforms in the form of short bite-sized videos, articles, pictures, etc. mostly that might affect the actual judgement of that case (in legal matters) or the reputation of the parties related to the incident. 

Thus, we need to learn to use our rational thinking and train our brains to be able to differentiate between the truth and the version or bits of truth being presented to us. The problem with such kinds of trials or the impact of such trials is that the ability of the people to analyze the different and various versions of the incidents is diminishing day by day, especially for young minds. The young minds seem to lose the sense of analytical thought process making them able to see things from a rigid point of view as these digital platforms constantly keep on engaging our eyes and minds by using their algorithms to probably temper the truth. 

There have been numerous examples of such digital trials in recent years, especially during and post-pandemic when the mode of almost everything became online and we all became inseparable from the digital world. With the advent of the internet era, there have been key changes in the everyday lifestyles of people. They are glued to their screens and thus they themselves don’t realize how they are being preyed to the biased information being provided to them. 

Pros of the Digital Trial

Although mostly this Digital Trial is a negative thing but it has certain merits as well. One of the merits is, that sometimes it is due to the publishing of events online using videos, pictures, articles etc, some incidents get reported and are being addressed as well as solved. Also, sometimes due to hype in media as well as the social media platforms, which are a major part of the digital genre, an issue is addressed with more proficiency, and the process for justice is initiated in a fast forward manner, because when everyone is updated about the details of the case that too the updated details of each day, thanks to our social media, then it is difficult for the competent authorities not to work on it.

Cons of the Digital Trial

There are many demerits of the Digital Trial, and the first and foremost demerit is the victimization of the people involved in the case. It usually happens that the people set their narratives and start putting judgements already on the basis of audio-visuals available on the internet about a certain person being the offender and thus affecting the actual judgement that is supposed to happen as per the Judiciary as the trial is a process to be conducted and carried by the courts and not any other incompetent authority like the news channels, and the social media platforms. Another demerit of the Digital Trial culture is that it stagnates the critical thinking process of people’s minds, especially the younger minds i.e the children and the students.

How can we train children and students not to fall prey to such biased information?

By now we have had an idea about this whole web of digital trials and how the minds of people can be polarised regarding information.

With this being a trend and a part of our lifestyle now, it is very important for teachers as well as parents to help and guide their students and children about ways to train their minds and about ways of developing proper reasoning skills. These skills would help them in many ways and mostly would help them to analyse the facts and contents they read, watch or come across online via the digital platforms.

1) To make the students more digitally literate the schools can come up with various counselling sessions as well as seminars wherein they can be made aware about what are the current such scenarios going on in and around them and let them speak out on ways they think about that certain issue.

2) The teachers can come up with certain ideas where they set up sessions in class to make the students understand the concept of multiple perspectives because only then they will be able to analyse situations from different angles and it is crucial to scrutinize any problem or any piece of information/news they read or watch, before believing them or coming to any biased conclusion, from different aspects to get to a better solution or understanding of the issue.

3) Both the parents and the teachers can encourage and focus on the decision-making abilities of the child. Through this the child will be able to deliberate about the right/wrongs, pros/cons etc of the news or to say ‘the trending news/issues’ that have been flashing on their screens letting them think about the certain issue in their certain way.

4) Another method that can be adopted by the parents, as well as teachers, is to train the young minds to keep their minds free of the single-dimensional versions of truths being presented by today’s digital platforms, is to make them learn to connect ideas. Let’s see a small example to understand this-

To make things interesting, let’s give this game a name. Let it be ‘Connect the Dots’. What the parents and teachers can do is to give them two (or more) different scenarios or questions like for example in the case of students the questions could be- 

How many students commute daily to school by the school bus or private cars?

Do you know/carry the city bus route from your home to school, or what are the different communication options available in the city? 

Now this is how the students shall develop the ability to connect different ideas i.e the connection between the above two questions is ‘transport communication’, that in case the school bus gets delayed or maybe due to some reason the parent is not able to drop the child, the students can get to school by alternate means of transport facilities by using their thinking skills.

The digital trial is something that will be prevailing in our times but what is more important is the ability to think outside the rigid dimensions of any issue and be able to do the basic reasoning and not believe in the biased information available on our screens.              Therefore we at SFS Narengi, Guwahati keep on trying our best to let our students have the best of minds and enhance their critical thinking skills by organising various lecture sessions, counselling sessions and digital awareness workshops for the students and interactive sessions with the parents as well so that with the proper collaboration of the school, the students and the parents we can help keep our students and their minds healthy as the budding young minds are the future of the country.