“Although social media has many advantages, it has a negative impact as well,” said member of the National Human Rights Commission and former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court D. Murugesan.
While delivering the convocation address on VIT University’s Chennai campus on Saturday, Mr. Murugesan said the constant use of social media might lead to addiction, which was detrimental to work and could lead to loss of privacy, vulnerability to crimes, cyber bullying, and online harassment.
“In 2011, there were 13,301 instances of cyber crime reported in India, in 2012 it was 22,060, in 2013 it was 71,780. In 2015, it went up to 3 lakh. India is ranked third highest in cyber bullying. These things must be kept in mind when you are on the internet,” he said.
Compassion in public life and contentment in personal life were the values that the outgoing students need to possess when they take on the challenges of life, Mr. Murugesan said.
VIT University chancellor G .Viswanathan said five lakh schools in India had very few students and it had become uneconomical and unviable to run these schools.
“Absenteeism among teachers is one of the important issues in school education. India faces a shortage of five lakh teachers in the school education sector. The Union government should follow the model of South Korea and Finland in school education system,” he said.
Vice-president of Daimler India Private Limited T. Narayanan, vice-presidents of VIT University Sankar Viswanathan, Sekar Viswanathan, and G. V. Selvam and assistant vice-president Kadhambari S. Viswanathan took part in the function.
As many as 1,535 undergraduate, post-graduate and doctoral students received their degrees during the convocation.