One minute read. Written by Agastya Sharma, a grade 6 student (junior editor I Kid You Not).

Social media and regular media are two factors that help us keep up with the world around us. But, when the facts are distorted, these two are about as useful as a rotten potato.

All of our parents have news applications, like the NDTV or the TOI app, on their phones. Every minute, you hear that beeping sound and you look to your phones, finding a notification that India has hit the 85,000-coronavirus case mark. How the feelings of the family who has lost a member to the disease, fit into a strip on your screen, I don’t know.

Social media is one of the best ways to propagate awareness and knowledge about the virus. But it is playing the exact opposite role. With all the forwards and totally wrong ‘awareness’ videos, it has become very hard to differentiate from WHO orders and a message originating from Ramesh babu, Gorakhpur.

Even the news channels are not giving us correct information. All the government needs to do to make sure the media doesn’t disclose the number of cases is have a ‘talk’ with the big cheese.

The bottom line being that these days, ‘trust’ doesn’t hold much worth in people’s eyes. To control the spread of misinformation, the police had implanted orders like fines and jail time for the forwarding of messages which were not certified. Problem is that even the police will be having a hard time controlling every single message sent.

The bottomer than bottom line is that you should stay safe from fake news and don’t send any yourself. Yes, I’m talking to you, Ramesh.

Written by Agastya Sharma
Agastya is a grade 6 student who is passionate about reading and writing.

Want to write for I Kid You Not? We publish children’s writing.
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